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C3C     VMBMHk 

§13 


THE  LIFE 


OF 


JOHN   WILLIAM   COLENSO,d.d, 

JBisbop  of  matal. 


BY    THE    REV. 

SIR    GEORGE    W.    COX,     BART..     M.A. 

RECTOR    OF    SCRAYI.SGHAM. 


IN    TWO     VOLUMES. 
VOL.  I. 


W.    RIDGWAY. 
iJ 


All  Rights  Reserved. 


Richard  Clay  and  Sons, 
london  and  bungay. 


J3X 


PREFACE. 

The  life  of  Bishop  Colenso  has  been,  and  will  be,  more 
momentous  in  its  issues  than  perhaps  any  other  life  in  the 
present  century.  That  it  should  be  so  is  only  the  fitting 
recompense  of  his  work.  From  first  to  last  he  sought  with 
a  single  heart  for  truth  and  righteousness  as  the  pearl  of 
great  price.  From  first  to  last  he  was  thankful  that  in  the 
Divine  ordering  of  things  he  had  been  enabled  to  search 
for  this  truth  in  a  Church  which  encourages  its  members  to 
seek  it  resolutely  and  to  proclaim  it  manfully  as  the  first  of 
all  duties. 

My  motive  in  undertaking  to  write  his  life  has  been  to  lay 
before  the  world,  for  his  words  and  his  acts  generally,  a  full 
and  complete  vindication.  It  would  be  ridiculous  were  I  to 
affect  ignorance  of  the  character  and  purpose  of  the  oppo- 
sition shown  to  him  by  members  of  certain  schools  or  parties. 
This  opposition  was  based,  professedly,  on  the  ground  that  he 
was  a  traitor  to  the  promises  made  at  his  ordination  and 
consecration,  a  rebel  against  the  laws  of  the  English  Church, 
an  apostate  from  the  faith  of  the  Church  Catholic  and  from 
Christianity. 

It  is  time  that  this  contention  should  be  brought  to  an 
end.     These  charges  were  made  by  men  who  steadily  refused 


vi  PREFACE. 

to  avail  themselves  of  the  legal  process  which  would  have 
issued  in  a  judgement  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  Church 
of  England  ;  and,  on  behalf  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  I  main- 
tain that  in  his  writings,  and  in  his  teaching  generally,  he 
was  entirely  faithful  to  the  promises  which  he  made  when  he 
received  the  ordering  of  deacon,  of  priest,  and  of  bishop ; 
entirely  faithful  to  his  duty  as  a  Christian  and  a  member 
of  the  Church  Catholic  ;  and,  more  especially,  that  his  books 
are  in  complete  accordance  not  merely  with  the  letter  of  the 
standards  of  the  Church  of  England  but  also  with  their  spirit. 
For  every  proposition  of  the  least  importance  in  his  books  a 
full  and  decisive  justification  is  furnished  by  the  series  of 
judgements  which  have  issued  from  the  highest  courts  of 
the  Church  of  England.  Englishmen  do  not  speak  of  the 
need  of  establishing  their  claim  to  rights  acknowledged  and 
secured  to  them  by  the  Great  Charter ;  and  I  am  in  no 
greater  degree  called  upon  to  claim  for  the  Bishop  of  Natal's 
conclusions  or  teaching  the  sanction  which  has  been  already 
extended  to  them  by  the  highest  tribunals  of  the  Church 
of  England.  The  charges  brought  in  irresponsible  fashion 
against  the  Bishop  of  Natal  have  been  bandied  about  long 
enough.  The  Bishop's  conclusions  and  teaching  have  been 
brought  to  a  legal  issue  in  cases  already  decided  by  the 
tribunals  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  and  they  are,  in  fact, 
as  far  removed  beyond  the  reach  of  censure  as  are  the  writings 
of  the  most  illustrious  and  the  most  orthodox  of  the  divines 
of  the  English  Church. 

In  so  saying,  I  am  speaking,  strictly  and  deliberately,  of 
the  whole  of  the  long  series  of  his  works.  No  one,  I  dare  to 
say,  can  pretend  that  of  the  convictions  or  conclusions  avowed 
at  any  time  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal  some  or  any  have  in  this 
memoir  been  designedly  withheld.  My  examination  of  his 
published  works  is,  I  believe,  so  minute  and  thorough  that 
attentive  readers  of  these  pages  will  be  placed  on  the  same 


PREFACE.  vii 

level  with  those  who  have  worked  their  way  patiently  and 
laboriously  through  them  all.  But  as  his  conclusions  with 
regard  to  the  composition  and  growth  of  the  Books  of  the 
Old  Testament  have  most  roused  the  antagonism  of  tradi- 
tionalists generally,  it  may  be  well  to  specify  the  most 
important  among  them,  and  the  most  pregnant  with 
momentous  consequences  for  the  future. 

These  I  believe  to  be  the  following  ;  and  they  are  given, 
as  nearly  as  possible,  in  the  Bishop's  words. 

(i)  That  only  a  very  small  portion,  if  any,  of  the  Pentateuch 
can  have  been  composed  or  written  by  Moses  or  in  the  Mosaic 
age. 

(2)  That  Moses  may  have  been  the  real  guide  of  the 
Israelites  from  Egypt  to  the  borders  of  Canaan,  or  a  personage 
as  shadowy  and  unhistorical  as  ^neas  in  the  history  of  Rome 
or  our  own  King  Arthur. 

(3)  That  Joshua  seems  to  be  an  entirely  mythical  character. 

(4)  That  there  are  two  or  more  different  and  self-disproving 
accounts  of  the  Creation,  Deluge,  and  other  events  or  incidents 
in  the  Book  of  Genesis. 

(5)  That  the  priestly  legislation  of  the  Books  of  Exodus, 
Leviticus,  and  Numbers  belongs  to  the  time  of,  or  to  a  period 
subsequent  to,  the  captivity  of  Babylon. 

(6)  That  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  was  composed  in  the 
reign  of  Manasseh,  or  in  that  of  Josiah. 

(7)  That  the  Books,  so  called,  of  the  Chronicles  were  written 
at  a  time  later  by  some  centuries  than  the  Babylonish 
exile. 

(8)  That  the  history  of  these  Books  of  Chronicles  is  not, 
as  it  professes  or  is  supposed  to  be,  a  trustworthy  narrative, 
but  a  fictitious  story,  put  together  for  a  special  purpose. 

The  holding  and  teaching  of  all  these  and  other  like 
propositions  are    in    every   respect   warranted,  justified,  and 


viii  PREFACE. 

covered  by  the  judgement  delivered  by  Dr.  Lushington  in  the 
Court  of  Arches  ;  in  other  words,  by  the  judgement  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury — a  judgement  which,  not  having 
been  reversed  on  appeal,  is  law. 

This  judgement,  in  the  case  arising  out  of  the  publication 
of  Essays  and  Revieivs,  declares  that  "  it  is  open  for  the 
clergy  to  maintain  that  any  book  in  the  Bible  is  the  work  of 
another  author  than  him  whose  name  it  bears," — the  true 
meaning  of  these  words  being,  the  judge  adds, "  that  the  clergy 
are  at  liberty  to  reject  parts  of  Scripture,  upon  their  own 
opinion  that  the  narrative  is  inherently  incredible  ;  to  disregard 
precepts  in  Holy  Writ,  because  they  think  them  evidently 
wrong." 

It  is  unnecessary,  therefore,  to  say  that  by  virtue  of  this 
judgement  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  have  the 
right  to  maintain  the  propositions  already  cited  from  the 
works  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  But,  in  affirming  this,  I  do 
not  restrict  myself  to  the  mere  assertion  that  the  teaching  of 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  is  in  full  accordance  with  the  law  of  the 
Church  of  England.  I  assert,  further,  that  only  in  men  like 
him  the  Church  of  England  has  the  true  supporters  and  friends 
who  can  guide  her  safely  through  the  troublesome  times 
which  all  must  feel  to  be  near  at  hand. 

I  claim  therefore  for  him  a  genuine  and  hearty  loyalty 
for  the  Church  of  England,  for  which  throughout  his  whole 
life  he  worked  and  fought,  under  the  assurance  that  she 
has  a  Divine  mission,  to  which  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  set 
bounds.  For  him  the  fact  of  her  comprehensiveness,  constantly 
broadening  and  always  more  and  more  beneficent,  was  the 
justification  of  all  efforts  for  making  it  complete.  It  is 
this  comprehensiveness  which  won  for  her  the  enthusiastic 
devotion  of  his  friend  Dean  Stanley,  and  added  strength  to  the 
faith  which  carried  his  thoughts  onward  to  her  distant  future. 
This  devotion  and  this  faith,  which  the  Bishop  shared  most 


PREFACE.  ■  ix 

fully,  had  their  centre  in  the  conviction  that  the  Church  is 
a  living  society  under  a  living  Head.  Against  both  the  Dean 
and  himself  insinuations  or  charges  of  unfaithfulness  to  their 
trust  were  lavishly  thrown  out.  To  these  accusations  Dean 
Stanley  replied  by  boldly  insisting  that  his  own  belief  was  not 
only  in  strict  accordance  with  the  legal  requirements  of  the 
National  Church  but  also  in  complete  harmony  with  its  spirit, 
and,  what  was  of  infinitely  higher  importance,  with  the  spirit 
of  Him  on  whom  its  life  depends.  In  every  writing  of  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  we  have  the  same  firm  conviction.  But 
although  he  had  the  deepest  sense  of  all  that  is  good  in  the 
English  Church,  he  did  not  idolize  it.  No  Church  can  be  either 
infallible  or  faultless  ;  and  the  Church  of  England  makes  no 
profession  of  being  either  the  one  or  the  other.  But  that  the 
Church  of  England  would  survive  the  changes  in  store  for  her, 
and  be  the  stronger  for  them,  he  had  the  profoundest  assurance, 
because  he  felt  that  she  was  charged  with  a  message  of  living 
truth. 

In  short,  whatever  may  be  said  of  the  Dean  may  be  said 
not  less  truly  of  the  Bishop.  With  his  friend  the  Bishop 
shared  the  conviction  that  "  Underneath  the  sentiments  and 
usages  which  have  accumulated  round  the  forms  of  Chris- 
tianity there  is  a  class  of  principles,  a  religion  as  it  were 
behind  the  religion,  which,  however  dimly  expressed,  has 
given  them  whatever  vitality  they  possess."  Both  the 
Bishop  and  the  Dean  felt  assured  that  the  sentiments 
and  usages  of  the  great  society  which  forms  the  Church  of 
England  must,  like  those  of  other  Churches,  have  vitality, 
.so  far  as  they  have  any,  by  virtue  of  this  religion  which 
underlies  them  all. 

Of  the  way  in  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal's  work,  taken  as 
a  whole,  was  received  by  those  who  felt,  or  declared,  it  to  be 
their  duty  to  oppose  him,  I  have  felt  myself  bound  to  speak 
with  the  utmost  plainness.     Wherever  I  have  met  with  mis- 


X  PREFACE. 

representation  or  evasion,  shuffling,  equivocation,  subterfuge, 
or  downright  falsehood,  I  have  not  looked  about  for  qualifying 
phrases  which  may  tend  to  leave  on  the  reader's  mind  the 
impression  that  a  thing  is  not  what  it  is.  If  in  some  instances 
this  plainness  of  speech  should  seem  to  affect  the  personal 
character  of  any  of  his  antagonists,  the  blame  of  it  must  lie 
on  the  evil  of  the  systems  which  those  antagonists  have  been 
resolved,  at  all  costs  of  truth,  honesty,  and  Christian  love,  to 
uphold  as  absolutely  faultless  and  perfect.  The  measure  in 
which  this  fatal  resolution  threatens  to  sap  the  very  founda- 
tions of  morality  in  what  is  called  the  religious  world,  and 
has  lured  into  falsehood  men  otherwise  upright  and  honour- 
able, is  appalling  indeed  ;  and  until  this  plague  of  unveracity 
is  arrested,  it  is  vain  to  look  for  a  healthier  state  of  things. 
Suspicion,  mistrust,  and  a  crowd  of  feelings  of  still  darker 
hues,  are  the  necessary  fruits  of  insincerity  and  falsehood  ; 
and  insincerity  and  falsehood  are  sins  into  which  men  must 
fall  who  are  determined  to  assert  that  things  are  faultless 
which  are  full,  to  say  the  least,  of  flaws.  On  those  who  have 
committed  themselves  to  such  a  course,  and  who  obstinately 
adhere  to  it,  it  is  not  for  us  to  pronounce  judgement.  Of 
the  systems  which  they  uphold  we  are  bound  to  use  words 
which  it  shall  be  impossible  for  any  to  misunderstand  or 
misinterpret. 

For  the  Bishop  of  Natal  the  battle  with  intolerance  and 
superstition  in  England  was  followed  by  a  warfare  not  less 
harassing  and  wearing  against  national  wrong-doing  in 
Southern  Africa.  In  the  day  of  his  unreasoning  resentment 
against  the  Bishop's  critical  method,  Mr.  Maurice  had 
charged  him  with  holding  "  the  accursed  doctrine  "  that  "  God 
has  nothing  to  do  with  nations  and  politics."  By  a  wonderful 
ordering,  the  man  whom,  because  he  showed  that  the  narrative 
of  Exodus  was  not  history,  Mr.  Maurice  accused  of  taking 
away    from    Englishmen    all    ground    for    looking    to    God 


PREFACE.  xi 

for  the  destruction  of  tyranny,  was  the  only  Englishman 
who  gave  up  time,  rest,  peace — was  ready  to  give  up 
everything — if  he  could  but  obtain  bare  justice  (apart  from 
Christian  gentleness  and  mercy)  for  injured  natives  or  tribes 
in    Southern  Africa. 

The  history  of  the  battle  which  he  fought  on  behalf  of 
men  who  had  been,  as  he  succeeded  in  proving,  and  as 
the  British  Government  allowed,  grossly  wronged,  is  given, 
so  far  as  it  was  possible  to  give  it,  in  his  own  words.  The 
Bishop's  letters  to  his  friends  form  a  record,  complete  from 
every  point  of  view,  of  the  Zulu  War  with  its  antecedents 
and  consequences  ;  but  of  these  letters  some  extracts  only 
can  be  given  here.  It  would,  indeed,  be  impossible  to  do 
justice  to  the  series  addressed  to  his  friends  in  England,  and 
in  particular  to  Mr.  Chesson,  without  giving  them  all  at  full 
length  ;  but  enough  is  here  laid  before  the  reader  for  the 
purposes  of  a  vindication  which  is  to  justify  his  political  not 
less  than  his  theological  or  religious  action. 

In  this  portion,  especially,  of  the  work,  I  owe  a  deep  debt 
of  gratitude  for  aid  received  from  the  Bishop's  family.  This 
help  has  been  bestowed  as  a  labour  of  love,  and  with  a  firm 
and  glad  trust  in  the  final  victory  of  truth  over  falsehood 
of  right  over  wrong.  The  cause  for  which  this  work  has 
been  taken  in  hand  is  the  one  thing  for  which  they  desire 
to  live ;  and  I  am  thankful  that  I  have  been  spared  to 
accomplish  a  task  needed  for  the  attainment  of  the  end 
which  they,  and  I,  have  most  at  heart, — the  end  which 
brings  with  it  the  vindication  of  his  whole  life.  To  his 
wife  and  to  his  children  these  pages  may,  I  trust,  serve  as 
an  earnest  of  the  great  reparation  which  will,  I  do  not  for 
a  moment  doubt,  be  made  by  his  countrymen  to  his  work 
and  to  his  memory. 

The  Bishop  of  Natal  was  happy  in  having  the  entire  con- 
fidence and  the  unswerving  devotion  of  every  member  of  his 


xii  PREFACE. 

own  family.  Throughout  the  whole  of  his  career,  from  the 
early  Cambridge  days  onwards,  his  wife  was  as  fearless  and  as 
earnest  in  seeking  and  acting  on  the  truth  as  he  was  himself, 
— as  ready,  for  instance,  if  need  were,  to  abandon  everything 
in  order  to  share  with  him  the  work  of  a  Christian  mission  in 
lands  beyond  the  pale  of  civilisation, — as  determined,  not 
merely  to  search  for,  but  to  speak  out,  the  whole  truth, 
without  regard  to  consequences.  Of  his  children,  the  one 
who  left  her  home  in  Natal  last  year,  to  help  me  in  the 
preparation  of  the  chapters  relating  to  the  dealings  of  the 
English  Government  with  native  tribes,  has  been  taken  to 
the  happier  home  in  which  they  who  part  here  are  reunited. 
Thousands  for  whose  welfare  she  shared  her  father's  toil  and 
self-devotion  will  remember  with  lasting  thankfulness  the 
name  of  Frances  Ellen  Colenso. 

Of  the  part  taken  by  his  eldest  daughter,  Harriette,  in  the 
great  work  of  his  later  years  no  adequate  description  can  be 
given.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  there  was  no  sacrifice  of  time 
or  strength  ever  called  for  which  she  did  not  make  joyfully, 
and  without  the  consciousness  that  she  was  making  any 
sacrifice  at  all.  With  wonderful  patience  and  fortitude  she 
bore  up  against  the  mere  physical  toil  of  the  work,  heavy  even 
when  the  Bishop  was  at  hand  to  guide  and  counsel.  With 
endurance  even  more  wonderful  she  has  persevered  since  his 
death  in  the  prosecution  of  his  great  task  of  obtaining  justice 
for  the  weak  and  helpless,  or,  where  it  was  too  late  to  hope 
for  justice,  of  resisting  the  progress  of  wrong,  and  of  pro- 
testing against  the  cynical  indifference  to  human  suffering 
which  has  marked  the  dealings  of  the  British  Government, 
or  of  some  at  least  of  its  highest  officials,  with  native 
tribes. 

That  I  have  been  enabled  to  have  my  part  in  vindicating 
his  life's  work  in  the  sight  of  all  English-speaking  men,  and,  I 
trust,  of  many  more,  is  to  me  a  matter  of  abiding  thankfulness 


PREFACE.  xiii 

and  joy.  Most  of  all,  am  I  thankful  that  I  have  had  the 
happiness  of  close  friendship  with  him  for  more  than  twenty 
years,  and  that  during  all  these  years  I  have  been  gladdened 
by  the  consciousness  of  a  singular  harmony  of  thought  and 
method  with  a  mind  never  thrown  off  its  even  balance,  and  of 
entire  accord  with  a  heart  for  which  truth  was  more  precious 
than  life. 


George  W.  Cox. 


SCRAYINGHAM    RECTORY, 

December  lo,  1887. 


"  You  need  boldness  to  risk  all  for  God — to  stand  by  the  Truth  and  its 
supporters  against  men's  threatenings  and  the  devil's  wrath.  .  .  .  you 
need  ?i patient  meekttess  to  bear  the  galling  calumnies  and  false  surmises 
with  which,  if  you  are  faithful,  that  same  Satanic  working,  which,  if  it 
could,  would  burn  your  body,  will  assuredly  assail  you  daily  through  the 
pens  and  tongues  of  deceivers  and  deceived,  who,  under  a  semblance 
of  a  zeal  for  Christ,  will  evermore  distort  your  words,  misrepresent  your 
motives,  rejoice  in  your  failings,  exaggerate  your  errors,  and  seek  by 
every  poisoned  breath  of  slander  to  destroy  your  powers  of  service." — 
Sermon  preached  at  the  Consecration  of  Bishop  Colenso,  St. 
Andrew's  Day,  1853,  by  Samuel  Wilberforce,  Bishop  of  Oxford. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

EARLY   YEARS,   AND   LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE   AND   FORNCETT    ....  I 


CHAPTER  II. 

TEN  WEEKS   IN   NATAL 5 1 

CHAPTER  III. 

EARLY   WORK    IN    NATAL     .     .      • 75 

CHAPTER  IV. 

"THE  COMMENTARY  ON   THE   EPISTLE  TO   THE   ROMANS"    ....     1 28 

CHAPTER  V. 
PREPARATIONS   FOR   THE   GREAT  WARFARE.      1 862-63 17I 

CHAPTER  VI. 

WORK    IN    ENGLAND,    1863-65.      THE   BATTLE 212 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  SO-CALLED   TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN 2/2 


xvi  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

PAGE 

CONSEQUENCES   OF   THE   SO-CALLED   TRIAL   AT   CAPETOWN  ....      328 


CHAPTER  IX. 

BISHOP   HAROLD    BROWNE   AND  THE  ANTAGONISTS   OF   THE  BISHOP 

OF   NATAL 409 

CHAPTER  X. 

THE  PENTATEUCH  :    ITS  MATTER 48 1 

CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  PENTATEUCH  :    ITS  COMPOSITION 530 

CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  PENTATEUCH  :    ITS    GROWTH 595 


Appendix  A. — Letter  to  Bishop  Gray,  August '],\Z(i\ 697 

Appendix  B. — List  of  Archbishops  and  Bishops,  \Z\Z-\Z']o  ....    707 


Portrait,  from    a    photograph    taken    in    1864    \  FrontisMece. 
BY  J.  E.  Mayall S 


THE    LIFE 

OF 

JOHN   WILLIAM    COLENSO,    D.D., 

LORD    BISHOP   OF   NATAL. 

CHAPTER   I. 

EARLY   YEARS,   AND   LIFE   AT   CAMBRIDGE   AND   FORNCETT. 

John  William  Colenso  was  born  at  St.  Austell,  January 
24,   1814. 

His  father,  who  belonged  to  a  Cornish  family,  held  the 
office  of  Mineral  Agent  for  part  of  the  Duchy  of  Cornwall,  an 
appanage  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  While  his  son  was  still  a 
boy,  his  own  circumstances  became  seriously  reduced  by  the 
adverse  results  of  mining  operations,  which  were  arrested,  as 
is  not  seldom  the  case  in  Cornish  mines,  by  an  irruption  of  the 
sea.  From  this  time  his  son,  struggling  to  complete  his  own 
education,  was  weighted  with  the  responsibility  of  contributing 
to  the  support  of  his  father  and  the  education  of  his  younger 
brother  and  his  two  sisters.  Of  his  mother,  who  died  when  he 
was  about  fifteen  years  old,  he  always  retained  a  most  tender 
remembrance.  An  intimate  friend  has  described  her  as 
"  lovely  both  in  mind  and  person." 

Of  his  childhood  there  is  little  to  be  told.  His  youth 
brought  with  it  a  hard  experience  of  the  difficulties  of  life.  A 
vol.   I.  B 

0 


2  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  i  . 

letter  written  in  1830  (November  13)  to  an  aunt  throws  light 
on  the  influences  of  various  kinds  then  working  upon  him.  It 
is  written  in  an  unformed  style  ;  but  it  shows  a  keenness  of 
insight  which  points  to  steadiness  as  well  as  independence 
of  judgement. 

"  On  serious  consideration  and  from  reflexion  on  what  actually 
transpired  in  my  mind  at  the  time,  I  cannot  but  agree  with 
you  in  thinking  that  it  was  the  mighty  Householder  who 
two  years  since  planted  the  seed  of  life  within  me.  The 
devil  may  have  mixed  tares  with  the  Spirit's  wheat,  but  the 
sower  was  God  ;  the  fruit  must,  and,  I  trust,  has  in  some 
measure  appeared.  I  have  not  the  slightest  recollection, 
nor  had  I  ever,  I  believe,  a  conception  of  the  time  when  I 
first  thought  of  eternity  and  the  danger  of  the  soul.  All  I 
can  say  is,  that  '  whereas  I  was  blind,  now  I  see.'  " 

Turning  to  the  subject  of  the  ministry  he  expresses  his 
longing 

"  To  be  engaged  in  this  awfully  pleasing  work.  There  is  a 
most  awful  grandeur  in  this  solemn  work.  We  are  not 
meddling  with  the  things  of  time,  with  this  world's  trifles. 
Eternity  !  Eternity  is  ours  ;  for  it  is  by  the  means  of  the 
ministry  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  most  generally  pleased  to 
give  His  blessing.  At  all  events,  it  is  the  members  of  that 
sacred  body  who  are  to  minister  unto  hungry  souls  their 
daily  bread,  to  fill  the  thirsty  with  the  nectar  of  heaven,  to 
heal  the  sick,  to  establish  the  wavering.  And  who  is 
sufificient  for  these  things  ^  " 

But  there  was  a  choice  between  the  ministry  of  the  English 
Church  and  that  of  Nonconformists,  to  whom  his  mother  and 
some  other  relatives  belonged. 

"  I  am  now,  since  we  have  had  Mr.  Hockin  ^  here,  fully 
convinced  that  a  Church  minister  may  be  a  man  of  God  ; 

^  This  exemplary  man,  then  curate  of  St.  .Austell,  was  afterwards  vicar 
of  Blackawton,  and  for  forty- five  years  before  his  death  in  1SS6  chaplain 
of  the  Devon  and  Exeter  Hospital. 


i8-,T.  EARLY  YEARS. 


and  his  opportunities  of  being  useful  must  far  exceed 
those  of  a  Dissenting  one.  The  first,  and  a  very  striking, 
advantage  (so,  at  least,  it  appears  to  me)  of  the  Church 
minister  over  the  Independent  is  his  actual  Independence. 
There  are  not  so  many  bigots  in  the  Church  as  there  used 
to  be,  nor  have  the  bishops  the  same  tj'rannical  power 
which  they  used  to  have  over  the  body  of  which  they 
represent  the  head.  .  .  .  When  once  the  Church 
minister  is  settled  in  his  church,  unless  guilty  of  some 
heinous  dereliction  of  duty,  he  cannot  be  expelled.  .  . 
Not  so,  however,  with  the  Independent.  He  must  preach 
not  what  he  likes,  but  what  his  congregation  likes  :  he 
must  obey  the  voice  of  his  flock,  and  in  too  many  instances 
the  flock  turns  out  a  flock  of  wolves  in  sheep's  clothing,  as 
for  instance  in  our  poor  little  Meeting,  where  all  is  riot  and 
confusion.  .  .  .  But  whatever  may  be  the  advantage  on 
the  one  side  or  the  other,  I  trust  I  am  prepared  to  enter 
whatever  situation  the  Almighty  may  in  His  unerring 
wisdom  have  designed  for  me.  ...  I  have  as  yet 
abundance  of  time  before  me,  comparatively  speaking,  for 
I  am  not  )'et  seventeen  ;  but  if  nothing  should  occur  to 
realise  my  wishes  with  respect  to  the  Church,  I  am  prepared 
for  the  Independents.  Yet  in  either  case  let  me  pray  that 
the  doctrine  of  the  Gospel  may  be  mine,  unclouded  by 
party  principles,  unobscured  by  the  impious  intrusion  of 
man's  own  ignorant  wishes  and  baneful  speculations." 

A  letter  to  his  grandmother,  Mrs.  Blackmore,  dated 
March  21,  1831,  gives  an  account  of  his  journey  from  Devon- 
port  to  Dartmouth,  there  to  serve  as  an  assistant  in  a  school 
kept  by  Mr.  Glubb,  the  incumbent  of  St.  Petrox.  He  found 
himself  in  a  country  the  beauty  of  which  gave  him  great 
delight,  in  the  company  of  men  who  were  "very  pleasant  and 
agreeable,  and,  best  of  all,  pious  characters,"  and  in  a  post 
which  left  him  about  two  hours  of  leisure  daily.  But  e\'en 
this  respite  was  obtained  by  dint  of  strictly  economising 
scraps  of  time  from  the  round  of  school  work,  which  began  at 

B    2 


4  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

six  a.m.  (he  had  himself  to  call  the  boys  at  five  o'clock)  and 
went  on,  with  breaks  amounting  to  only  five  and  a  half  hours, 
to  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening. 

Seven  months  later  (October  26,  1831),  he  writes  expressing 
the  hope  that  his  grandmother  may  be  able  to  give  him 
favourable  news  of  Pentuan,  the  family  property,  and  asked 
whether  she  was  "  much  surprised  at  or  interested  in  the 
fate  of  the  Reform  Bill,"  which  had  just  become  law. 

"  We  could  not  expect  the  Lords,  I  think,  to  do  otherwise, 
bullied  as  they  were  by  such  a  brawling  set  of  ragamuffins 
as  assembled  at  Liverpool,  Manchester,  and  other  places." 

The  cholera  was  now  not  far  from  England,  and  the 
approach  of  the  pestilence  leads  to  a  review  of  his  spiritual 
state,  in  which  he  remarks  : — 

"  For  the  last  two  years  instead  of  (as  I  thought  myself  re- 
peatedly) being  a  humble  and  hungry  follower  of  Jesus,  I 
have  made  a  god  of  myself,  and  an  idol  of  my  own  soul." 

He  has  found  too  much  refreshment  in  "thoughts  and 
feelings,"  "  in  prayers  that  he  may  feel  more  of  his  Saviour's 
love,  enjoy  more  of  His  presence,"  while  he  should  have 

"  Found  his  greatest  happiness  in  serving  God  and  in  being 
made  holy  and  like  Him.  The  former  without  the  latter 
I  see  to  be  mere  enthusiasm,  and  not  a  spiritual  worship  of 
the  Lord  Almighty." 

The  great  question  of  his  life's  work  was  thus  already 
beginning  to  press  upon  him.  The  consciousness  of  the 
powers  which  were  for  him  gifts  from  an  all-wise  and  loving 
Father  pointed  in  one  direction  :  the  straitened  circumstances 
of  his  family  seemed  to  point  in  another.  If  he  looked  in 
upon  himself,  everything  called  him  to  a  university  career. 
Must  these  hopes  be  dissipated,  because  the  temporal  means 
of  his  kinsfolk  were  not  what  they  had  been  t     Without  some 


1832.  EARLY  YEARS. 


help  from  them  he  knew  that  those  hopes  could  never  be 
realised  :  but  he  resolved  at  the  outset  that  whatever  they 
might  do  for  him  should  be  recompensed  to  them  in  full. 
The  promise  was  nobly  redeemed  ;  but  the  years  which  must 
pass  before  he  could  redeem  it  were  years  of  the  hardest 
struggle,  and  seldom  perhaps  has  such  a  struggle  been  faced 
and  endured  with  so  much  patience,  constancy,  and  cheerful- 
ness, with  so  profound  a  sense  of  duty,  and  with  a  spirit  so 
resigned  to  the  will  of  One  infinitely  wiser  and  better  than 
himself  But  it  was  needful  to  provide  for  such  outlay  as  on 
any  calculation  must  be  inevitable.  From  his  grandmother 
he  received  an  answer  which  held  out  little  hope  ;  and  in  a 
letter  to  his  uncle,  Mr.  W.  P.  Blackmore  (February  27,  1832), 
he  expresses  his  trust  that  all  his  hopes  may  not  be  dashed 
by  a  refusal  from  him,  his  only  stay  in  the  present  moment 
of  difficulty. 

"  My  object  is  to  enter  as  a  sizar  at  St.  John's — which 
if  I  can  effect  (and  I  do  hope  the  education  1  have 
received,  and  redoubled  diligence  through  the  next  seven 
months  will  enable  me  to  do  it)  my  expenses  would  be 
comparatively  nothing.  But  I  do  not  ask  you  to  support 
me  at  colleg-e.  Mr.  Glubb,  and  all  I  can  converse  with  on 
the  subject,  assure  me  there  will  be  no  difficulty  in  support- 
ing myself  by  private  pupils,  and  a  thousand  other  aids 
which  a  studious  man  cannot  help  receiving,  provided  I  can 
at  once  establish  my  entrance  there.  Will  you  then — this 
is  my  only  and  shall  be  my  last  request — will  you  in  Octo- 
ber next,  if  all  things  are  well,  advance  me  i^20  to  place 
me  at  college  }  For  the  repayment  of  this  you  shall  have 
my  most  solemn  promise,  whenever  God  shall  place  it  in 
my  power — my  books  are  worth  that  sum,  but  these  I  trust 
it  will  never  be  necessary  to  apply  to.  .  .  .  Whichever  way 
your  resolution  is  fixed,  do  write  me  by  return  of  post,  as 
nothing  can  be  of  more  consequence  to  me  than  an 
immediate  acquaintance  with  it." 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 


The  offer  made  by  his  uncle  was  that  he  would  provide  a 
sum  of  £'^'^  for  his  second  year  of  residence,  if  his  other 
relations  would  furnish  a  like  sum  for  the  first  year.  Writing 
to  his  grandmother,  with  expressions  of  thankfulness  for 
the  "gleam  of  light"  thus  thrown  "upon  the  darkness "  of 
the  prospect  before  him,  he  says  in  reference  to  these 
conditions  : — 

"  It  may  be  possible,  may  I  not  say  probable,  that  I  shall  be 
put  into  such  a  situation  as  not  to  require  your  assistance 
the  third  year.  At  all  events,  believe  me  that  no  endeavours 
shall  be  wanting  on  my  part  to  support  myself  or  raise  my- 
self to  a  station  which,  under  God's  blessing,  may  enable 
me  to  provide  for  myself  as  well  as  for  those  who  may 
perhaps  hereafter  become  dependent  on  me. 

"  Can  you  then  comply  with  dear  uncle's  request,  or  has 
the  providence  of  God  put  it  out  of  your  power .''  At 
all  events,  please  to  give  a  speedy  answer  to  this  letter^ 
as  in  the  first  case  I  shall  instantly  begin  a  course  of 
reading  and  preparation  for  a  foundation  sizarship.  .  .  . 
If,  however,  you  cannot  afford  to  comply  with  my  wishes, 
why,  I  believe  I  must  resign  all  thoughts  of  an  university 
education.  My  best  hours  are  fast  fleeting — something 
must  shortly  be  done.  If,  therefore,  all  my  endeavours 
should  prove  fruitless,  I  shall  turn  my  thoughts  to  some 
other  profession  ;  and  in  such  case  may  the  Lord  preserve 
me  from  despondency  and  despair,  for  I  candidly  confess  I 
am  fit  for  nothing  else  but  the  university." 

In  a  subsequent  letter  (April  i6)  to  his  grandmother,  he 
enters  more  into  the  details  of  his  probable  expenditure  at 
the  university,  referring  to  the  advice  and  suggestions  of 
Mr.  Glubb,  and  also  to  the  experience  of  Kirke  White,  who 
declared  that  he  knew  a  fellow  collegian  who  had  only  ;^20  a 
year. 

Five  months  later  (September  25)  he  writes  again,  an- 
nouncing his  immediate   departure   for  Cambridge.      Steam 


1832.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  7 

from  Falmouth  to  London  was  chosen  as  the  cheapest  mode 
of  transit ;  and  the  narrative  of  his  journey  shows  the  rigidness 
of  the  economy  to  which  he  conscientiously  and  cheerfully 
submitted  himself.  He  found,  however,  that  the  sea  passage 
scarcely  saved  him  money ;  nor,  in  spite  of  the  unrelaxing 
bravery  with  which  he  fought  the  battle,  was  his  yearly  outlay 
at  the  first  quite  so  small  as  he  had  hoped  it  might  be. 
Writing  from  St.  John's  (October  28,  1832)  he  describes  the 
general  features  of  college  life,  speaks  of  his  having  cheerful 
and  pleasant  rooms,  and  mentions  his  having  had  to  pay  £,2 
for  a  Greek  Lexicon  and  a  book  on  conic  sections.  There 
were,  further,  for  the  first  term,  costs  which  would  not  come 
again,  and  some  of  which,  as  for  furniture,  he  would  recover 
at  the  end  of  his  residence. 

In  a  letter  written  towards  the  end  of  his  first  year,  he 
speaks  of  the  retrospect  and  the  prospect  as  being  both,  on 
the  whole,  encouraging,  and  expresses  the  hope  that  the  out- 
lay for  the  next  year  may  be  met  in  part  by  his  share  in  the 
half  profits  of  two  books  which  he  had  prepared  for  the 
publishers,  the  one  consisting  of  some  translations  from  Horace, 
the  other  of  annotations  on  the  Gospel  of  St.  Matthew.  These 
were  followed  by  a  translation  of  Plato's  Apology  of  Socrates. 
His  success  in  the  Christmas  examination  had  won  for  him 
an  exhibition  of  iJ^20 ;  success  in  the  great  midsummer 
examination  would,  he  hoped,  obtain  for  him  a  Margaret 
sizarship,  which,  being  worth  ;6^6o,  would  with  his  exhibition 
put  him  "in  a  very  comfortable  situation."  His  first  con- 
siderations are  for  his  finances.  They  could  not  be  otherwise. 
But  although  the  need  of  stinting  himself  had  never  led 
him  into  meanness,  the  severity  of  the  struggle  could  not  fail 
to  make  itself  felt. 

"  I  have  hardly  eat  or  slept  for  the  last  week,  and  am  afraid  I 
am  looking  '  like  a  winnard,'  as  we  sa}-,  through  anxiety  and 
fatigue." 


8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  I. 

To  the  future  he  looked  forward  in  high  hope  ;  but  there 
were  immediate  expenses,  the  payment  of  which  could  not  be 
postponed.  His  uncle  Richard,  who  in  the  meantime  had 
undergone  the  terrible  loss  of  his  eyesight,  had  not  fulfilled 
his  promise  ;  and  he  begs  his  grandmother  to  see  him,  if  it  be 
possible,  and  put  the  case  before  him.  He  did  not  write 
himself,  because  his  uncle  would  be  obliged  to  ask  others  to 
read  the  letter,  and  he  particularly  wished  to  keep  everything 
private.  Early  in  the  following  year  (January  7,  1834)  he  has 
still  to  write  on  the  same  subject. 

"  The  plain  truth  is  that,  unless  he  can  be  induced  to  assist 
me  once  more,  I  cannot  stay  here  ;  if  he  can,  my  success  is 
certain.  And  now  I  proceed  to  state  my  reasons  for  this 
assertion.  I  took  tea  the  other  day  with  my  kind  tutor, 
Mr.  Hymers.     It  was  the  day  I  received   from   St.  Austell 

the  account  of  T 's  last  vile  injustice  to  us,  by  which 

all  our  hopes  appeared  utterly  blasted,  mine  certainly  among 
the  rest  ;  since,  had  you  received  your  due  from  the  sale  of 
Pentuan,  I  might  have  hoped  for  a  little  further  assistance 
from  you,  which,  of  course,  is  now  impossible.  In  the 
course  of  the  evening  I  told  him  that  I  had  had  an  appli- 
cation from  a  man  of  my  year  to  take  him  as  a  pupil,  and 
asked  him  whether  he  advised  me  to  do  it.  He  put  a  most 
decided  veto  upon  it,  and  told  me  it  was  quite  absurd  for 
me  with  the  prospects  I  had  before  me  of  success  to  waste 
my  time,  for  which  no  money  could  afford  me  compensation. 
On  this  I  hinted  that  I  believed  I  should  be  obliged  to  do 
so,  as  I  thought  I  should  not  be  able  to  stay  here  without 
it.  Explanation,  &c.,  of  course  followed,  and  the  result 
was  that  he  forbade  me  positively  to  take  pupils,  told  me 
that,  if  I  could  pay  off  my  present  bills,  he  would  endea- 
vour that  my  future  college  expenses  should  be  absolutely 
nothing,  and  expressly  said  that  I  should  not  want  while  an 
undergraduate,  if  he  himself  paid  for  me." 

Mr.  Hymers  was  as  wise   as   he  was   kind.     The  need'  of 
waiting    patiently    for    the    great    ordeal  was    manifest.      A 


1 839-  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  9 

mathematical  work  was  added  to  the  three  from  which  he 
already  expected  some  profit.^  Through  the  efforts  of  his 
grandmother  the  present  help  was  provided  ;  and  Mr. 
Hymers,  writing  (March  14,  1835)  to  that  lady,  says 
emphatically  : — 

"  I  never  knew  a  young  man  of  greater  promise,  or  one  more 
deserving  the  attention  of  his  friends.  He  bids  fair  to  be 
no  less  an  honour  to  his  relations  than  to  his  college  and 
university." 

The  great  ordeal  was  passed  with  brilliant  success.  In  1836 
he  was  Second  Wrangler  and  Second  Smith's  Prizeman  ;  and 
in  March,  1837,  he  was  elected  Fellow  of  St.  John's. 

Two  }'ears  later,  on  Sunday,  June  g,  1839,  he  was  admitted 
to  deacon's  orders  by  the  Bishop  of  Ely.  In  the  same  year, 
Dr.  Longley,  then  head  master  of  Harrow,  and  afterwards 
Archbishop,  first  of  York,  then  of  Canterbury,  applied  to  the 
University  of  Cambridge  for  a  mathematical  tutor  ;  and  Mr. 
Colenso  was  recommended  for  the  post.^  His  sojourn  at 
Harrow  was  marked  by  one  heavy  disaster  and  many  mis- 
fortunes. A  fire  entirely  destroyed  his  house,  newly  built  and 
scarcely  completed,  while  the  depressed  state  of  the  school, 
which  sank  very  low  in  general  repute  under  the  management 
of  Dr.  Wordsworth,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  left  him  at 

'  He  also  competed  successfully  three  times  for  Hare's  Exhibition  : 
and  also  for  Litherland's,  at  Christmas,  1833,  and  Dr.  Reyner's  in  1835. 
At  Christmas,  1834,  he  obtained  the  Naden  Divinity  Studentship,  and  in 
November,  1835,  was  elected  Scholar  of  his  College. 

-  During  the  time  of  his  mastership  he  was  frequently  invited  by  the 
vicar,  Mr.  Cunningham,  to  preach  in  Harrow  Church.  A  colonist,  Mr. 
Chilton,  whose  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Colenso  began  in  1841,  says  that 
whenever  he  preached  the  church  was  crowded,  not  only  with  Churchmen 
but  also  with  Nonconformists,  and  that  men  were  known  to  walk  from 
London,  twelve  miles,  to  hear  him.  He  adds  that  "among  the  boys  and 
young  men  at  the  school  Mr.  Colenso  was  held  in  the  most  unbounded 
esteem.  With  the  townspeople  of  every  class  no  man  was  a  greater 
favourite.  He  was  adviser  of  the  troubled,  a  friend  of  the  destitute,  and 
an  enemy  to  none." 


lo  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

length  so  heavily  in  debt  that  a  change  became  necessary. 
He  returned  to  Cambridge  at  the  end  of  1841,  and  for  four 
years  worked  as  tutor  at  St.  John's  College,  of  which  he  was 
also  Fellow.  Four  years  later  (1846)  he  resigned  his  Fellow- 
ship, having  married  Sarah  Frances  Bunyon,  eldest  daughter 
of  the  late  Robert  Bunyon,  and  accepted  the  rectory  of 
Forncett  St.  Mary,  a  small  country  village  in  the  diocese 
of  Norfolk,  where  he  gave  himself  to  the  work  of  his  parish 
and  his  private  pupils.  He  had  been  engaged  to  Miss  Bunyon 
for  three  years  ;  and  by  a  strange  coincidence  her  family  also 
had  in  the  interval  lost  money  heavily,  and  partly  by  mines, 
so  that  his  marriage  did  not  relieve  him  of  any  of  his  pecuniary 
difficulties. 

To    HIS   UNCLE,    S.    ROWSE,   ESQ. 

"  May  29,  1839. 
"  You  will  be  glad  to  hear  that,  instead  of  building,  as  I  pro- 
posed, I  am  become  'Lord  of  the  Manor'  at  Harrow, 
i.e.  have  been  able  to  take  the  house  formerly  belonging  to 
Lord  Northwick,  which  has  till  now  been  in  the  occupation 
of  Mr.  Phelps,  one  of  our  masters,  who  has  realised  a  for- 
tune there  in  five  or  six  years,  more  than  sufficient  to  pur- 
chase the  whole  estate.  The  house  is  quite  a  mansion,  with 
forty-seven  acres  of  ground  attached,  and  superb  gardens. 
I  enter  the  13th  of  August.  I  hope  to  have  an  opportunity 
of  thanking  you  for  your  kindness  when  I  come  down  at 
Midsummer." 

To  T.  Pattinson  Ferguson,  Esq. 

"  Harrow,  February  4,  1840. 
"  At  last  I  have  secured,  I  hope,  a  really  leisure  hour  to 
devote  to  you.  If  you  knew  the  feelings  of  pleasure  with 
which  I  read  your  letter,  you  would  not  be  unwilling  to 
receive  my  plea  of  occupation  as  a  valid  and  sincere  excuse 
for  my  not  replying  to  it,  for  I  could  not  consent  to  drop  a 
hasty  line  only  in  return  for  such  a  memorial  of  your  friend- 
ship, and  such   a  source    of  real   gratification    to   myself. 


tS40.  life  at  CAMBRIDGE.  n 

Indeed  I  do  believe  that  you  have  decided  on  that  course 

which  by  the  blessing  of  God  will  tend  to  secure  both  your 
present  and  eternal  happiness.  I  do  think  you  have  chosen 
that  for  which  your  natural  talents  and  disposition  in  my 
own  eyes  peculiarly  fit  you,  and  I  pray  that  you  and  I  may 
yet,  w^hile  life  and  strength  are  spared  to  us,  glorify  by  our 
labours  and  patience  upon  earth  the  blessed  Lord  and 
Master  to  whose  service  it  is  our  privilege  to  devote  our- 
selves. Your  description  of  your  own  feelings  on  the  sub- 
ject of  your  fitness  (in  point  of  religious  knowledge  and 
experience)  for  this  glorious  office  I  can  most  truly  realise. 
Fearful  I  know,  by  sad  remembrance  of  days  not  long 
elapsed  in  the  progress  of  my  own  life,  is  the  struggle  of  the 
*  strong  man '  to  retain  possession  of  the  heart,  and  some- 
times terrible  and  deadly  are  the  falls  with  which  he  dashes 
his  victim  to  the  ground.  Neither  you  nor  I  can  expect  to 
avoid  this  conflict— especially  in  our  early  days  of  religious 
life  ;  but  thanks  be  to  God,  who  after  all  will  give  us  the 
victory  through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  May  He  in  His 
infinite  mercy  preserve  us  from  presumptuously  resting  on 
His  promises  of  grace  to  the  abandonment  of  our  duties  ; 
but  yet  may  we  enjoy  the  happy  privilege  of  looking  for- 
ward with  humble  confidence  to  that  day  when,  having 
led  us  safely,  notwithstanding  all  our  manifold  infirmities, 
through  this  wilderness,  He  will  land  us  on  the  other  side 
of  Jordan  in  the  land  of  everlasting  rest.  My  dear 
Ferguson,  from  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  my  past  life, 
this  course  of  thought  has  been  of  late  familiar  to  me,  and 
forms  almost  the  daily  bread  by  which  I  have  been  sup- 
ported. The  providence  of  Almighty  God  has  showed  me 
troubles  of  late,  has  most  justly  laid  on  me  the  rod  of 
chastisement,  because  in  the  hour  of  my  prosperity  I  forgot 
Him,  and  sacrificed  to  devils.^  My  flesh  will  sometimes 
shrink  under  the  burden  of  debt  and  difficulty  and  dis- 
appointment ;  but   I  trust  I  am  not  always  forgetful  of  the 

These  expressions  must  be  taken  along  with  those  in  which  he 
blames  himself  for  extravagance.  Of  these  something  more  will  be  said 
presently. 


12  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

hand  which  has  mingled  honey  in  every  cup  of  bitterness, 
and  amidst  much  infirmity  of  purpose,  and  alas  !  still  more 
unworthiness  of  practice,  can  yet  cling  in  the  secret  cham- 
bers of  my  heart  to  the  belief  that  He  hath  done  and 
ever  will  do  all  things  well.  I  feel  with  you,  however,  how 
very  little  I  really  know  of  God,  how  very  faint  a  concep- 
tion I  have  learnt  to  entertain  of  His  loving-kindness  and 
faithfulness  and  majesty,  how  little  especially,  how  scarcely 
at  all,  do  I  realise  the  wondrous  love  which  brought  our 
Saviour  to  the  death  of  the  cross  for  us.  Nay,  there  are 
moments  when  I  feel  almost  the  cloud  of  infidelity  between 
my  soul's  eyes  and  the  Redeemer  of  the  world  ;  and  I  am 
sensible  that  with  my  mouth  indeed  I  may  honour  Him, 
with  my  heart's  desire  to  do  so,  but  with  my  mind  I  almost 
deny  Him.  Well,  in  this  state  of  ignorance,  and  wretched- 
ness, is  it  not  a  comfort  to  know  that  there  is  One  above 
who  has  felt  the  power  of  temptation,  who  can  be  touched 
with  a  feeling  of  our  infirmities,  who  is  exalted  for  the  very 
purpose  of  giving  us  repentance  as  well  as  remission  .-'  Is  it 
not  a  privilege  to  be  encouraged  to  lay  bare  our  hearts 
before  our  Heavenly  Father,  who  knoweth  our  frame  and 
remembereth  that  we  are  but  dust }  " 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Harrow,  March  24,  1840. 
.  .  .  .  "Will  you  come  and  see  me  soon?     I  am  very  solitary 

in  the  midst  of  a  crowd My  house  is  rated  at  a  very 

high  rent.  The  choice  is  not  so  much  between  '  this  at  this 
rent,  or  not  at  all,'  as  between  '  this  at  any  rate  or  ruin,'  and 
that  the  consequence  as  much  of  my  own  extravagance  and 
folly  ^  as  of  the  calamity  I  have  suffered  under.      I  trust   I 

^  The  extracts  from  the  letters  relating  to  this  period  of  his  life  are 
given  as  indispensably  necessary  to  enable  the  reader  to  form  a  true 
idea  of  his  moral  and  spiritual  growth.  Every  utterance  in  them  is 
transparently  sincere  ;  but  one  of  the  most  remarkable  features  exhibited 
in  them  is  a  singular  sensitiveness  of  conscience,  and  his  self-accusations, 
whatever  they  may  be,  must  be  interpreted  with  a  strict  reference  to  this 
characteristic.  Thus  the  supposition  that  he  had  at  any  time  been  guilty 
of  what  is  commonly  known  as  extravagance  is  really  nothing  less  than 


1840.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  13 

am  now  endeavouring  to  set  about  creeping  slowly  up  the 
face  of  the  cliff  down  which  I  have  been  all  but  precipitated, 
and  have  only  saved  myself  for  the  present  by  snatching  at 
a  stump  which,  if  it  yields,  will  but  accelerate  my  fall.  I 
hope  I  see  above  me  the  points  I  may  gain  and  the  steps  I 
may  take,  so  as  by  patience  and  exertion  to  reach  the  free 
and  open  ground  ;  but  I  am  not  too  sanguine,  and  can  only 
believe  that  all  will  at  last  be  well.  At  any  rate,  I  must 
learn  to  wait  patiently  God's  own  good  time  for  the  decision 
of  my  future  prospects  ;  and  now  enough,  my  dear  Ferguson, 
of  self ;  but  your  own  inquiries  partly  provoked  this  egotism. 
I  hope,  indeed,  that  we  shall  both  realise  in  our  hearts  the 
truth  of  the  great  Principle  which  seems  to  breathe  through- 
out our  Scriptures  that  the  Knowledge  of  God  shall  be 
revealed  to  those  who  obey  His  Will.  Oftentimes  when  one 
is  tempted  through  the  absence  of  present  distinct  percep- 
tion of  the  Love  of  God  to  us,  and  especially  (I  speak 
for  myself)  of  the  wonderful  loving-kindness  of  our  Saviour, 
and  that  astonishing  mercy  to  us,  which  I  cannot  but 
acknowledge  with  my  head  indeed,  when  I  consider  His 
sufferings  and  death,  but  oh  !  how  very  little  feel  recipro- 
cated in  my  own  heart — oftentimes,  then,  I  find  at  such 
moments  the  recollection  of  these  promises  of  great  com- 
fort to  me,  and  sensible  value  in  propping  up  my  drooping 
faith.  '  If  any  man  will  do  his  will,  he  shall  know  of  the 
doctrine  whether  it  be  of  God.'  '  He  that  loveth  me  will 
keep  my  words,'  and  again  on  the  other  hand,  '  He  that 
hath  my  commandments   and   kcepeth  them,  he  it  is  that 

ludicrous.  His  life,  from  his  very  childhood  onwards,  had  been  one  of 
hard  and  rigorous  self-denial,  a  battle  with  inadequate  means  to  provide 
not  only  for  his  own  absolute  wants,  but  for  the  help  which  he  longed 
always  to  give  to  others.  His  early  and  very  intimate  friend  Mr.  Ferguson 
says  on  this  point  (September  21,  1886) :  "  I  imagine  that  what  he  called 
extravagance  may  have  been  nothing  more  than  a  perfectly  justifiable 
expenditure  in  the  prospect  of  succeeding,  as  he  was  entitled  to  expect  he 
should,  at  Harrow.  The  burning  of  his  house,  and  the  utter  failure  of  the 
school  under  Wordsworth,  brought  him  into  difficulties  which  were  for  a 
long  tmie  a  sore  burden  to  him."  A  life  more  free  from  all  that  is 
commonly  called  extravagance  can  scarcely  be  imagined. 


14  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 


loveth  me,  and  he  that  loveth  me  shall  be  loved  of  my 
Father,  and  I  will  love  him,  d^nd  manifest  myself  io  him.'  It 
can  never  be  enthusiasm  to  believe  that  these  words  convey 
a  distinct  promise  of  a  gradual  growth  in  grace  and  in 
knowledge  of  our  Lord,  to  those  who  are  found  waiting  on 
Him  in  patient  continuance  in  well-doing  according  to  their 
present  knowledge." 

To   THE   SAME. 

'•  Harrow,  May  6,  1840. 
[After  asking  his  friend  whether  he  would  like  to  have,  as 
his  first  charge  in  holy  orders,  a  chapelry  near  Twickenham, 
and  suggesting  that  he  might  receive  some  Cambridge  pupils 
there,  he  adds  : — ] 

"  I  have  spent  two  or  three  delightful  days  at  a  little  vicarage 
near  Maidenhead  where  a  clergyman's  life  must,  if  faithfully 
devoted  to  his  duties,  be  very  happy.  The  vicar's  garden 
opens  into  his  churchyard,  and  both  run  along  the  banks  of 
the  Thames,  surrounded  by  fine  scenery.  It  is  a  spot  I 
love  at  times  to  contemplate,  even  in  the  sketch-book  of 
memory  ;  and  it  would  be  to  me  a  source  of  great  enjoy- 
ment and,  I  should  hope,  no  small  instruction  amidst  the 
rich  variety  of  life,  and  with  the  fresh  twinkling  waters  at 
my  feet,  to 

'"  Talk  or  think  of  Death,  and  play  a  while 
With  his  black  locks.' 

"  It  gives  a  solemn  reality  to  the  quiet  labours  of  a  pastor's 
life  to  be  brought  thus  habitually  into  a  connexion  with 
the  other  world, — it  may  tend  to  banish  transport  and 
young  enthusiasm, — to  prevent,  as  Newman  has  it,  our 
enjoying  to  the  full  God's  gifts  of  Providence,  of  health 
and  strength,  and  temporal  happiness,  by  perceiving  its 
instability  and  uncertainty  ;  but  then  it  secures  to  the 
Christian's  mind  the  blessing  of  his  Master's  peace,  which 
consists  in  feeling  that  every  change  is  subject  to  His 
Gracious  hand,  and  enables   us  to  walk  more  humbly  with 


1840.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE. 


our  God,  in  thankfulness  but  not  in  ecstasy,  as  those 
who  are  daily  watching  for  themselves  the  coming  of  their 
Lord." 

To  Rev.  J.  P.  Ferguson. 

"  October'],  1840. 
'  Do  not  think,  my  dear  friend,  that  silence  with  me  has 
originated  in  neglect.  The  fact  is,  that  the  state  of  my  own 
affairs  is  such  that  I  cannot  at  all  times  command  that 
evenness  and  thankfulness  of  mind  which  a  Christian  should 
ever  desire  to  exhibit.  .  .  .  And,  so  you  are  numbered 
amongst  the  ministers  of  God  (for  I  saw  your  ordination 
in  the  papers).  I  deeply  rejoice  at  it,  and  earnestly  pray 
that  you  may  be  led  to  see  daily  more  and  more  the 
blessedness  of  a  life  devoted  to  the  service  of  the  Lord. 
The  longer  I  live,  the  more  do  I  become  sensible  of  this 
truth,  that  to  enjoy  the  happiness  of  religion,  it  must  be 
deemed  the  one  thing,  the  only  thing  needful — be  admitted 
into  all  our  thoughts,  to  preside  over  all  our  hours  of  ease 
and  amusement  as  well  as  of  exertion  and  actual  labour  in 
the  work  of  God.  It  is  not  the  attention  to  this  or  that 
particular  duty,  the  abstinence  from  this  or  that  indulgence, 
which  constitutes  the  following  of  our  blessed  Master's  steps  : 
we  must  try  to  breathe  the  air  of  another  world,  to  /zV^upon 
the  hopes  of  God's  Word,  and  not  merely  allow  them  a 
place  in  our  memories,  while  we  make  up  the  deficiency  of 
supply  for  our  daily  comfort  from  the  things  of  time  and 
sense.  It  is  a  very  noticeable  feature  of  the  present  day, 
that  this  is  the  character  gaining  ground  in  the  hearts  of 
men  as  that  of  true  piety.  The  entire  devotedness  of 
heart  and  life  is  the  essence  of  Oxford  Tract  Divinity,  as 
fresh  from  the  original  authors  of  that  system  ;  but  alas  !  in 
what  a  wrong  direction  does  the  impulse  of  their  creed 
hurry  them  !  " 

To   THE   SAME. 

"1840. 

"  My  eyes,  thanks  to  Fraser's  advice,  are  again  restored  to 
their  wonted  power.  ...  I  have  no  longer  the  excuse  I  had 
for  neglecting  to   thank   you   for  the  ver\-   happy   hours   I 


r6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  I. 

spent  at  Wollerton.  The  night  I  left  you  was  the  happiest, 
I  think,  I  have  ever  yet  spent  in  my  life,  the  happiest  at 
least  in  its  consequences.  It  was  the  last  night  of  the 
old  year,  and  not  finding,  as  I  expected  (in  my  ignorance 
that  Belper  was  ten  miles  from  Derby),  the  Strutts'  car- 
riage waiting  for  me  at  the  station  (as  it  would  have 
been  perhaps  in  the  daytime  when  some  of  the  family 
happened  to  be  in  the  town),  I  was  obliged  to  take  up  my 
quarters  in  the  solitary  chamber  of  an  hotel,  and  there  I 
heard  the  old  year  depart  and  welcomed  the  new  one  in 
by  the  sound  of  the  Derby  bells.  I  thank  God  that  I 
spent  that  night  alone.  It  was  the  close  of  the  first  year 
of  my  life  that  I  had  by  His  mercy  spent  in  His  avowed 
service,  with  how  much  imperfection  He  knows,  and  I  know 
how  often  He  had  saved  mine  eyes  from  tears  and  my  feet 
from  falling.  However,  the  thought  added  greatly  to  the 
happiness  and  solemn  joy  of  the  evening,  and  I  would  not 
have  exchanged  that  lonely  room  for  the  merriest  family 
fireside  that  gathered  round  the  birthday  of  the  year." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Harrow,  March  25,  1841  (?). 
..."  The  teetotallers  may  certainly  produce  very  specious 
principles  on  which,  as  foundation,  to  rest  their  claim  for 
union,  viz.  that  it  is  the  privilege  at  least,  if  not  the  duty, 
of  any  Christian  to  sacrifice  an  innocent  indulgence,  if  by  so 
doing  he  can  promote  his  brethren's  good.  I  do  not  say 
that  this  is  the  vulgar  notion  of  the  matter ;  but  it  is  the 
argument  used  by  the  few  good  and  devoted  men  who  have 
joined  the  Society.  My  course  would  be,  as  was  suggested 
by  Goulburn,  to  point  to  the  consequences  of  asceticism, 
and  other  combinations  to  refuse  the  gifts  of  God,  though 
set  on  foot  by  excellent  men  and  with  the  most  laudable 
self-denying  designs." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Harrow,  April  20,  1841. 
"  There  is  a  little  mixture  of  Oxford  opinions  in  the  University, 
but  not  formidable.     Collison,  of  St.  John's,  is  the  principal 


1 841.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  17 


advocate  of  them  at  present.  Teetotalism  has  some  parti- 
sans. Jeffreys,  Senior  Fellow  of  St.  John's,  and  Boodle,  an 
excellent  man  who  is  Vicar  of  the  new  church  at  Barnwell, 
have  signed  the  pledge.  We  discussed  it  at  Perry's  rooms 
the  other  day,  and  decided,  I  imagine,  against  the  system  ; 
though  I  see  they  have  arguments  which  go  a  great  wa\- 
with  conscientious  men,  not  very  thoughtful,  nor  looking 
well  beneath  the  surface,  where  the  objections  will  be 
found." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Harrow,  September  11,  1841. 
"  Your  last  letters  have  been  very  grateful  to  me,  and  if  the 
intercourse  of  Christian  friends  on  earth  be  so  pleasant, 
what  will  it  be  hereafter  when  all  hearts  will  be  filled  with 
one  holy  desire  to  glorify  the  God  of  our  salvation  ?  O  my 
dear  friend,  when  our  Saviour  comes  to  visit  us,  will  He 
really  find  faith  upon  earth,  find  us  throwing  our  whole  souls 
upon  His  work,  and  trusting  fully  to  His  faithful  promise  ? 
Or  will  He  find  us  still  hampered  with  the  entanglement  of 
earth-love  and  earth-bound  desires,  and,  like  the  nations  of 
the  world,  seeking  after  food  and  raiment,  ease  and  comfort, 
in  our  own  ways,  and  after  our  own  imaginations  .''  " 

To   THE   SAME. 

"1841. 
"  I  am  just  in  the  position  in  which  I  last  wrote,  having  been 
disappointed,  day  after  day,  of  the  receipt  of  the  long- 
looked-for  intelligence  that  cash  had  been  deposited  with 
my  bankers  by  the  kindness  of  that  Providential  friend 
[Mr.  Freeth]  to  whom  I  have  before  now  referred,  as 
seemingly  raised  up  by  God  for  my  help  in  the  time  of 
greatest  distress.  I  will  not,  therefore,  delay  to  com- 
municate to  you  the  main  facts  of  the  case  touching 
my  departure  from  Harrow.  The  pecuniary  difficulties 
under  which  you  heard  me  to  be  labouring  were  onl}- 
increasing  continuously  as  time  advanced,  and  at  length 
seemed  brought  to  a  crisis  by  the  reduction  of  the  number 
of  my  boarders,  and  the  polite  negative  given  to  my 
application  for  renewal  of  a  loan  of  ^800  from  my  bankers. 
VOL.  I.  C 


1 8    .  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

.  .  ,  Thus,  then,  the  hour  was  come,  and  apparently  without 
hope  of  escape  from  the  pressure  of  accumulated  obliga- 
tions, and  certainly  none  in  continuing  my  struggles  at 
Harrow. 

"  In  this  conjuncture  I  laid  the  state  of  my  affairs  before  my 
friend  Freeth,  who  at  once  advised  my  resignation  and 
retreat  to  Cambridge,  and  most  generously  undertook  to 
advance  me  (or  procure  it  for  me)  whatever  sum  I  might 
need  to  pay  my  way  out  of  Harrow.  That  sum  was  ;^2,6oo 
(minus  ^750  of  furniture),  and  with  his  former  loan  of 
;^2,2oo  makes  an  amount  of  ;^4,8oo,  which  the  marvellous 
liberality  of  this  one  individual,  bound  by  no  tie  of 
relationship,  and  hardly  of  friendship  before  he  first  laid 
me  under  obligation  to  him,  has  consented  to  assist  me 
with.  It  is  this  sum,  iJ"2,6oo,  which  through  some  delay  in 
his  own  arrangements  has  not  yet  been  finally  placed  to  my 
credit,  which  has  occasioned  my  continued  delay. 

"  And  now  here  am  I,  my  dear  friend,  like  a  sailor  on  a  rock 
in  the  midst  of  a  rolling  ocean,  and,  it  may  be,  still  to 
be  swept  off  by  some  furious  tide  ;  yet,  even  if  it  be  so, 
God  is  with  us,  and  who  shall  be  against  us .'  .  .  .  Mean- 
while, He  hath  put  gladness  in  my  heart  abundantly,  and 
I  am  enabled  to  sing  again  in  the  secret  chambers  of  my 
soul  as  in  the  days  of  my  early  youth  when  first  the  day- 
spring  broke  upon  my  spirit,  and  I  tasted  the  first  delicious 
draught  of  the  water  of  life.  O  bless  the  Lord  with  me, 
dear  friend,  and  let  us  exalt  His  name  together.  You  can 
hardly  conceive  how  blessed  a  state  of  things  prevails  here 
at  this  time,  so  much  pure  truth  preached  and  practised  on 
every  side,  Scholefield,  Lane,  Langshaw,  Perry,  Boodle, 
Spence,  and  several  ot'iers,  besides  several  pious  Fellows 
of  my  own  college,  living  and  labouring  as  children  of  God 
in  their  day  and  generation." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Harrow,  December  i,  1841. 
"  I  believe  that  my  connexion  with  Harrow  will  (as  a  resident) 
close  on  Tuesday  next ;  but  there  are  so  many  difficulties 


1842.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  •  19 

in  making  our  arrangements  that  I  can  by  no  means  at 
present  rely  on  this  being  the  case,  ...  If  I  leave  Harrow> 
it  will  be  with  some  permanent  sacrifice,  I  expect,  of  in- 
come, during  the  continuance  of  my  lease,  and  with  a  debt 
of  ;^5,ooo,  which  depends  for  liquidation  solely  on  my 
personal  exertions  at  Cambridge,  or  wherever  my  steps 
by  God's  merciful  providence  may  be  directed.  However^ 
blessed  be  His  holy  name,  His  promises  have  been  fulfilled. 
He  has  not  left  me  comfortless  in  this  season  of  difficulty. 
....  Believe  me  that  I  receive  your  little  reports  of  your 
people  with  great  interest.  Do  not  fail  to  refer  to  them 
occasionally,  as  you  have  need  or  occasion." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"■March  31,  1842. 
"  As  you  wish  to  know  what  I  have  been  doing,  or  expect  to  do 
in  pecuniary  matters,  I  will  just  say  that  God  has  mercifully 
given  me  all  I  needed  in  the  way  of  pupils,  as  many,  indeed, 
as  I  thought  I  should  be  justified  in  taking,  and  even  more. 
But  if  you  ask  me  whether  I  have  any  such  hope  or  imagi- 
nation as  your  old  friend  Paul's  (a  similar  story  by  the  way 
has  more  than  once  recurred  to  my  own  memory,  in  refer- 
ence to  a  Welshman  whose  family  estate  came  into  his 
hands  mortgaged  to  its  full  value,  and  in  effect  lost  to  him, 
and  who  laboured  in  penury  and  privation  of  every  kind  to 
recover  its  possession  and  then  died),  I  may  say  that  I  have 
neither  one  nor  th-e  other — no  Jwpe,  because  I  know  that  I 
am  in  the  hands  of  One  who  will  order  everything  for  good 
for  us,  if  we  are  enabled  to  leave  everything  in  His  own 
hands  ;  and,  therefore,  if  poverty  and  difficulty  are  desirable 
for  His  glory  or  our  security  and  advancement  in  the  know- 
ledge and  love  of  Himself,  as  I  am  sure  they  often  or 
most  frequently  are,  it  would  be  monstrous  folly  and  pre- 
sumption to  wish  it  otherwise.  .  .  .  Neither  have  I  any 
thought  of  it  as  things  stand  at  present,  for  my  debt  is 
enormous,  and  in  point  of  fact,  with  all  my  pupils,  I  shall 
find,  I  believe,  but  very  little  surplus  left  towards  discharge 
of  the  capital.    I  cannot  take  with  comfort,  I  mean  religious 

C  2 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 


comfort,  ....  more  than  eight  pupils,  I  think,  for  I  have 
decided  to  give  them  their  separate  hour,  as  most  profitable 
for  them,  and  to  my  mind  most  satisfactory;    and  this,  with 
my  Fellowship,  &c.,  will  raise  about  i^Soo  per  annum,  out 
of  which    I   have  nearly  ;^550  to  pay  in   interest  and  in- 
surances, to  provide  also  for  personal  expenses,  and  then  to 
repay  a  capital  debt  of  ^^"6,500.     But  if  God  be  for  us,  who 
shall  be  against   us  .'     If  our  religion  be  the  Truth,  what 
have  we  to  fear  .■*....    One  thing  I  have  indeed  been 
taught  even  within  the  last  three  months — nay,  two  within 
the    last    six — which    have    inexpressibly    added    to    the 
strengthening  and  refreshing  of  my  soul  in  the  midst  of  this 
warfare.     The  one  was  a  more  complete  insight   into  the 
utterly  lost  and  helpless  condition  of  our  souls — that  all  is 
of  God  who  hath  also  wrought  all  our  works  in  us,  and  will 
still  for  the  future  have  to  work  all  in  us.    I  thought  I  knew 
this  truth  before.     I  should  have  preached  it,  methinks,  and 
taught  it  to  others  ;  but  I  had  certainly  never  realised  it  in 
my  own  heart,  but  was  imperceptibly  to  myself  trying  to 
repair  and  "  patch  up  my  house  utterly  gone  to  decay."  Daily 
was   I   labouring,  though   I  hardly  perceived  what   I  was 
about,  in  this  most  unprofitable  work  of  trying  to  plaster 
over  my  faults  and   deficiencies,  and  present  myself  clean 
and  comely  in  the  presence  of  my  God  ;    but  it  was  all  in 
vain.     I  mended  this,  and  the  repair  itself  disclosed   more 
to   be   repaired   behind   it.     Day  after  day  was   the  same 
wearisome  work  to  be  repeated  of  sweeping  and  garnishing 
a  tenement  which  the  corruption   of  human   nature  would 
quickly  restore  to  its  previous  defilement  and  wretchedness, 
dropping  dank  exudations  from  the  walls,  and  covering  the 
floor  with  decay.  .  .  .  And  now,  perceiving  that  the  whole 
work  of  reparation  was  utterly  out  of  my  own  power  or 
comprehension,  but  that  only  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God,  who 
had  taught  me  to  desire  the  renewal  of  my  heart  and  sancti- 
fication   of  my   nature,   could   carry  on   and   complete   the 
blessed  work  in   His  own  time  and  in  His  own  way,  there, 
thanks  be  unto  God,  in   His  hands  am   I   content  to  leave 
the  work,  entirely  satisfied  that,  since  it  is  His  luill,  SeXrjjjLa, 


i843.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  21 

it  is  his  intention,  not  merely  His  desire,  that  the  children 
of  God  should  indeed  be  altogether  led  and  sanctified  by 
the  Spirit  of  God,  and  assured  of  that  willingness  by  know- 
ing that  whereas  once  I  was  blind,  now  I  see.  We  love 
Him  because  He  first  loved  us. 
"  The  other  blessing  for  which  I  desire  most  humbly  to  thank 
our  gracious  Father,  and  to  tell  to  those  I  love  upon  earth, 
if  perchance  our  hearts  may  rejoice  together  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  one  common  lesson  of  His  love,  is  the  inestimable 
privilege  of  prayer  and  secret  communion  with  God.  .  .  . 
It  is  only  since  my  residence  in  Cambridge  that  the  mercy 
of  the  Lord  has  opened  to  me  more  abundantly  the  fulness  of 
that  blessing  which  is  given  to  His  children  in  the  encourage- 
ment to  pray.  I  see  in  it  now  the  secret  of  all  growth  in 
grace  and  love  and  holiness — continual,  frequent  unfainting 
prayer." 

To   THE   SAME. 

''April  10,  1S43. 
"  I  could  wish  indeed  to  see  you  for  a  while,  and  share  with 
you  the  thoughts  of  the  past  lines  of  our  spiritual  life,  for 
my  own  views  have  wonderfully  changed,  not  in  character, 
I  trust,  but  in  complexion,  since  last  I  parted  from  you,  I 
had  then  seen  nothing  of  religion  but  in  the  writings  of  the 
Evangelical  School,  or  of  their  opposite,  the  Oxford  ;  and 
while  I  saw  in  the  principles  of  both  some  portions  of  God's 
truth,  I  felt  a  want  of  cordial  agreement  with  the  practice 
at  least,  and  often  with  the  teaching  of  either.  The  last 
few  months  have  brought  me  into  contact  with  Coleridge 
and  Maurice,  and  I  was  truly  rejoiced  to  find  by  your  reply, 
what  now  I  might  have  imagined  from  your  previous  letters, 
that  you  have  also  been  drawing  water  with  them  from  the 
deep  well  of  Truth." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"St.  John's  College,  September  14,  1S43. 
"  What  have  you  been  reading  or  doing  lately  ?     My  only,  or 
almost  only,  occupation  (except  that  of  my  calling,  and  this 
includes  an  Arithmetic  for  Schools,  which  I  have  just  pub- 


2  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

lished)  has  been  to  read  the  first  edition  of  Maurice's 
[^Kingdom  of  C/irist],  which,  especially  in  the  first  volume, 
is,  for  its  freshness  and  vigour,  apparently  far  superior  to 
the  second,  which  I  had  previously  read.  O  what  glorious 
missionary  principles  are  there,  the  only  ones  as  it  seems  to 
me  which  can  give  real  life  and  energy  to  the  messenger  of 
Truth,  who  comes,  not  as  if  from  the  clouds  above,  or  the 
deeps  beneath,  but  a  fellowman  among  his  brethren,  all  of 
whom  have  the  same  Heaven  above  them  that  he  has  made, 
and  every  daily  mercy,  rain  and  sunshine,  life  and  breath 
and  all  things,  speaking  to  them  as  to  all  as  tokens  that  they 
have  a  Father  there,  that  they  are  living  in  a  world  from 
which  the  caiise  of  disobedience  has  been  removed,  that  they 
too  may  look  upward,  and  fear,  and  put  their  trust  in  the 
mercy  of  Him  that  made  them.  ...  I  dare  not  look 
towards,  that  hallowed  work  myself,  for  my  way  is,  for  the 
present  at  least,  effectually  barred  against  it :  and  it  seems 
to  be  the  will  of  God  that  I  should  remain  at  home,  and  fill 
up  my  part  and  station  here.  .  .  .  Did  you  read  that 
very  beautiful  note  of  Whytehead's,  where  he  spoke  of  these 
being  as  it  were  in  the  far  chantry  of  some  vast  cathedral, 
while  those  at  home  would  be  worshipping  in  the  choir,  but 
that  there  was  still  the  same  roof  of  the  Catholic  Church 
extended  over  all .'' 

"  I  am  much  taken  up  at  present  with  thoughts  of  the 
fearful  state  of  our  Universities  in  which  prevails  such  an 
utter  disregard  of  the  statutes  on  which  we  are  founded, 
and  not  of  the  letter  only  but  of  the  spirit  and  first  prin- 
ciples of  these  institutions.  Surely  we  need  a  great 
revival  here,  amidst  such  long  continued  indolence  and  un- 
concern for  the  solemn  duties  attached  to  our  positions.  It 
seems  to  have  been  an  evil  step  of  an  idle  and  self-indulgent 
age  when  the  present  tutorial  system  was  established,  and 
the  Fellows  have  generally  no  connexion  with  the  youths 
around  them  but  that  of  mere  accident  and  self-interest  ; 
but,  indeed,  the  evils  are  very  great,  when  calmly  considered, 
of  our  present  circumstances,  and  they  wall  end,  possibly,  if 
not  corrected,  in  our  ruin." 


1843.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  23 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Cambridge, 

^'■October  23,  1843. 

"  I  have  just  had  my  C.  Missionary  Report  brought  me : 
and  when  I  look  on  its  pages  and  appeals,  how  one  longs 
for  a  Missionary  spirit  in  this  University.  How  very  un- 
worthy is  it  of  our  calling  and  privileges  that  out  of  such  a 
mass  of  men,  who  yearly  leave  us,  the  attractions  of  home 
and  comfort  should  prevail  over  the  summons  to  go  forth 
among  the  multitudes  that  perish, — I  say  not  eternally — 
which  is  in  the  hands  of  Infinite  Truth  and  Love, — but 
temporally,  in  the  loss  of  that  light  and  joy  and  glorious 
hope,  which  quicken  by  the  Grace  of  God  our  own  hearts. 

0  that  some  plan  could  be  devised  for  stirring  up  under 
God  such  a  yearning  for  the  souls  of  men  among  us 
Surely  among  so  many  there  must  be  some  who  are  at 
liberty  and  have  power  to  obey  the  call.  But  parents  must 
learn  to  train  up  their  children  for  missionaries  from  the 
womb,  to  give  them  up  to  God's  service  from  the  first, 
not  for  comfort  and  their  own  solace  and  pride,  but  for  the 
sacrifice  of  all  earthly  ties,  if  needful,  for  the  service  of  the 
Cross." 

To  W.  N.  Ripley,  Esq. 

"  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
^'■November  i,  1843. 

"  Although  you  may  not  be  making  as  rapid  advancement  in 
actual  study  as  might  be  possible  under  other  circumstances, 
yet  your  time  of  preparation  will  be  profitably  spent,  if  it 
sends  you  up  to  us  furnished  with  those  habits  of  order,  in- 
dustry, and  obedience,  which  will  secure  you  from  so  much 
of  the  danger  and  evil  which  must  surround  you  when  you 
leave  finally  your  parents'  roof,  and  enter  upon  the  solemn 
duties  of  self-government.       I  have  a  great  desire  (one  day, 

1  trust,  to  be  fulfilled)  of  knowing  personally  Mr.  Nottidge, 
whom  I  have  long  learnt  to  revere,  and  from  whom  I  am 
sure  you  and  I  may  learn  many  precious  lessons  of  true 
wisdom.     Let  us  not  lose  the  opportunities  given  us  in  our 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

several  paths  of  life,  of  profiting  by  the  experience,  and  study- 
ing the  examples  of  those  who  have  gone  before  us.  They 
are  great  talents  committed  to  us,  for  the  due  improve- 
ment of  which  we  must  be  held  responsible.  I  fully  believe, 
indeed,  that  there  is  no  truth  more  fearfully  neglected  in 
these  days  than  that  to  whom  much  is  given,  of  them  shall 
the  more  be  required.  We  are  so  ready  to  measure  ourselves 
by  others  who  have  had  far  less  of  light  and  advantages,  and, 
judging  our  own  case  better  than  theirs,  to  rest  satisfied 
therewith.  But  doubtless  there  were  none  of  the  grosser 
sins  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  practised,  openly  at  least,  in 
Chorazin  and  Bethsaida  in  the  time  of  our  Saviour,  and  yet 
it  will  be  more  tolerable  for  the  former  in  the  day  of  God 
than  for  the  latter ;  and  Christian  England  may  find  her 
state,  amidst  neglected  privileges  and  abused  power  and 
wealth  and  influence,  far  more  miserable  and  guilty  in  His 
sight  than  that  of  the  heathen,  who  have  had  a  very  little 
light  and  have  not  quenched  it  ;  and  some  such  I  daresay 
}'ou  will  have  met  with  in  your  classical  studies.  And,  at 
any  rate,  when  you  next  read  Plato  or  Sophocles,  or 
even  your  present  true-hearted  writer  Thuc}'dides,  bear  in 
mind  that,  wherever  Truth  is  spoken  by  their  lips,  it  cannot 
be  from  the  corrupt  part  of  man,  nor  the  prompting  of  an 
evil  spirit,  but  from  the  Divinity  itself,  which  dealt  with 
them,  stirring  their  spirits  deeply  within  and  giving  them 
glimpses  of  that  great  light  which  the  Gospel  of  Christ  has 
poured  upon  our  eyes.  Try  to  get  the  habit  of  reading 
the  classics  as  the  writings  of  brother-men,  thinking  and 
moved  just  as  you  and  I  are." 

To   THE    SAME. 

\No  date  {probably  the  same  year). 1 
It  is  one  of  my  greatest  trials  that  my  necessary  occupations 
so  engross  my  time  at  present  as  to  allow  me  only  to  write 
(for  the  most  part  at  least)  in  haste  and  hurry,  if  I  write 
at  all,  to  my  friends,  and  I  therefore  often  am  in  danger  of 
saying  too  much  upon  subjects  on  which  I  touch,  by  saying 


1843.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  25 


too  little.  Such  is  in  a  measure  the  case  with  reference  to 
the  remarks  I  made  in  my  last,  and  to  which  you  have 
referred :  and  I  rejoice  to  see  that  you  have  thought  sin- 
cerely, though  you  will  doubtless  have  to  think  much  more, 
upon  the  subject  in  question,  which  in  fact  is  simply  this, 
whether  we  should  address  the  heathen  in  our  missionary 
capacity  as,  until  we  come  to  them,  aliens  altogether  from 
the  Family  of  God — I  mean,  the  creatures  whom  He  has 
made  upon  this  earth,  or  whether  we  shall  believe,  as  I  am 
satisfied  the  Scriptures  teach  us — as  I  am  sure  the  daily 
mercies  poured  on  them  as  well  as  on  ourselves  should 
teach  us — that  they  too  have  a  Father  in  heaven,  whose 
will  may  have  suffered  them  to  be  a  while  in  ignorance, 
whilst  His  great  mystery  is  going  forward,  but  whose  Love 
has  not  cut  them  off  from  His  present  mercy,  and  from  the 
benefit  of  the  promises  of  which  zve  have  the  revealed 
assurance,  that  they  who  seek  the   Lord  shall  surely  find 

Him Such  is  the  statement  of  the  Apostle  in  that 

wonderfully  striking  chapter,  Rom.  ii.,  which  to  me  so 
clearly  sets  forth  the  fact,  that  none  of  God's  reasonable 
creatures  are  left  without  sufficient  guide  of  Life,  but  will 
find  that  using  faithfully  their  one  small  talent  (small  com- 
pared with  ours,  and  yet  not  small  perhaps  in  itself),  they 
too  will  share  the  mercies  of  the  Most  High,  proclaimed  to 
the  race  of  man  through  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  God,  and 
to  be  published  to  all  the  world,  as  soon  as  Christian  feet 
shall  carry  them.  But  then,  you  say,  were  there  any  such 
— were  they  not  all  seeking  the  praise  of  men  and  not  that 
which  Cometh  of  God  only .''  In  the  sense  in  which  it  may 
be  said  that  we  are  altogether  become  unprofitable  by 
reason  of  the  sin  and  corruption  mingled  with  our  best  acts, 
of  course  I  know  they  too  will  stand  condemned  in  the 
sight  of  a  most  Holy  Being ;  but  in  the  sense  in  which  we 
men  speak  of  righteousness,  I  think  you  have  judged  them 
too  severely.  Examine,  my  dear  Ripley,  the  real  influencing 
motives  of  men  in  the  present  day,  I  do  not  mean  ungodly 
and  professedly  worldly  men,  but  of  those  who  acknowledge, 
and  for  aught  we  can  judge  to  the  contrary  do,  in  sincerity 


26  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  I. 

and  in  the  main,  desire  to  obey  the  truth, — and  how  much 
of  secret  self-love  and  love  of  human  applause  will  be  found 
mingled  with  their  most  religious  acts — yes,  often  intruding 
its  unhallowed  presence  into  their  acts  of  devotion  and  their 

very  secret  hours  of  prayer  before  God I  dare  not 

with  this  conviction  venture  to  charge  home  upon  the 
ancient  heathen  the  evil  which  I  see  prevailing  so  ex- 
tremely, and  often  among  pious,  and  in  many  respects  true 

Christians  of  the  present  day As  far  as  I  know,  I 

could  not  think  so  of  yEschylus,  Sophocles,  Thucydides, 
Virgil,  Cicero,  and  many  others.  I  do  not  mean  that  they 
were  never  moved  by  vanity  and  love  of  human  applause. 
We  know,  for  instance,  that  Cicero  was  very  faulty  in  this  ; 
but  look  then  at  his  life,  at  his  self-sacrificing  earnestness 
for  the  public  good,  his  pure  morality,  and  the  deeply 
devotional  spirit  of  many  of  his  writings  ....  and  then 
in  Christian  charity  let  us  say  whether  we  should  not  in  a 
Christian  judge  this  sin  a  failing  rather  than  attach  to  it 
the  stamp  of  wilful  guilt.  But  I  will  go  yet  further,  and 
say  that  many  of  the  ancients  (and  I  know  not  why  I  should 
not  say  also  of  modern  heathens,  but  that  I  do  not  know  so 
much  of  them)  will  stand  up  in  the  judgment  with  the  men 
of  this  generation  and  condemn  them.  One  such  example 
is  enough, — as  good  as  a  thousand  for  my  purpose  ;  and 
that  one  shall  be  Socrates,  who  surely  was  not  a  seeker  of 
human  applause,  despised,  mocked,  evil-entreated,  martyred 
for  the  cause  of  truth,  which  by  many  questionings  of  heart 
and  communings  of  spirit  with  his  unseen  Creator  he  had 
been  permitted  to  obtain  a  glimpse  of — and  with  all  the 
zeal  of  a  missionary,  as  you  very  truly  observe,  longed  and 
laboured  to  convey  it  to  the  hearts  of  others.  But  the  true 
missionary  spirit  cannot  be  wanting  where  there  is  any 
glimpse  vouchsafed  of  the  real  Truth, — cannot  be  wanting 
in  kifid,  though  its  degree  depends  upon  the  earnestness 
with  which  we   carry  out,  by   God's  grace,  the  knowledge 

which   we  have  already  attained Once  more,  I   do 

find  great  joy  and  refreshment  of  spirit  in  looking  upon  the 
Greek  poet  and  philosopher  as  our  brother  man,  and  there- 


1845.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  27 

fore  sharing  with  us,  and  we  with  him,  in  all  the  sympathies 
of  our  humanity  ;  and  the  same  I  experience  even  in  turning 
to  the  far-off  heathen,  dark  and  benighted  as  they  are,  yet 
not  given  over  as  a  prey  to  destruction,  but  having  still 
tokens  around,  and  voices  within,  which  are  speaking  to 
them  of  a  Father  in  Heaven,  and  to  us  of  their  connexion 
(we  do  not  presume  to  analyse  or  comprehend  it)  with  Him 
who  is  the  Head  of  the  whole  race,  the  Son  of  Man,  the 
Saviour  of  the  world." 

To  THE  Rev.  T.   P.  Ferguson. 

"Cambridge,  December  19,  1845. 
"  I  am  now  writing  with  my  rooms  littered  and  half  emptied, 
the  term  being  ended,  and  myself  still  detained  here,  long 
after  I  had  expected  to  have  left  College,  by  the  long  delays 
which  have  attended  the  severance  of  the  Norfolk  living. 
That  act,  however,  was  completed  at  the  last  Privy  Council, 
and  I  am  now  in  daily  expectation  of  receiving  the  presen- 
tation of  my  portion  of  it,  St.  Mary's,  from  Lord  Effingham. 
The  income,  as  you  know,  is  about  £^^0  with  a  house  to 
be  built., — otherwise  a  desirable  living,  and  from  the  small- 
ness  of  population,  under  300,  well  suited  for  my  purpose  of 

tuition Having  been  so  long  in  expectation  of  this 

event,  and  with  every  reasonable  ground  for  supposing  that 
it  would  long  ago,  as  indeed  it  ought  to,  have  been  com- 
pleted, you  will  not  be  surprised  if  I  take  also,  should 
God  permit,  another  and  much  more  solemn  step  in  life  very 
shortly — within  a  week  perhaps  of  my  presentation.  I 
shall  exceedingly  desire  that  you  might  be  present  on 
the  occasion,  if  you  happened  to  be  in  London,  and  so 
would  the  lady  and  her  family,  who  (the  former  at  least) 
know  you  sufficiently  as  one  of  my  dearest  and  most 
valued  friends." 

In  this  letter  Mr.  Colenso  refers  to  his  approaching  marriage 
with  Miss  Sarah  Frances  Bunyon.  The  following  extracts 
from   letters   addressed  to  her  will  show  how  completely  he 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 


could  share  with  her  all  his  thoughts,  his  motives,  his  aims  and 
purpose  in  life.  They  will  also  show,  more  clearly  perhaps 
than  any  letters  addressed  to  others,  the  direction  in  which 
his  mind  and  heart  were  working,  and  the  depth  and  fervency 
of  his  spiritual  convictions. 

"  St.  John's  College, 

"  October  25,  1842. 

.  ..."  I  have  had  an  application  to  take  a  pupil  in  Divinity,  and 
am  half  disposed  to  accede  to  it — but  for  my  present  almost 
entire  ignorance  of  all  that  comes  under  that  designation, 
except  the  English  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  the  Greek  of 
the  New  Testament.  I  am  not  sure,  however,  that  I  may 
not  be  able  to  trace  the  finger  of  God's  Providence  in 
this  request,  which  comes  from  an  eminent  Christian 
minister,  for  a  gentle  affectionate  son,  whose  acquaintance 
I  already  value  ;  and  I  believe  my  best  course  will  be  to 
tell  him  of  my  present  incompetency  for  aught  but,  I  would 
hope,  by  the  merciful  help  of  God's  Holy  Spirit,  the  spiritual 
study  of  the  New  Testament  and  the  formation  of  mind  and 
temper  which  close  intimacy  of  this  kind  would  enable  me, 
under  His  blessing,  to  forward. 

"  I  have  had  a  walk  to-day  with  my  dear  friend  Dr. , 

and  a  long  and  interesting  talk  with  him,  but  he  does  not 
yet  know,  I  think,  the  full  value  of  a  Christian's  life  ;  and  I 
am  ready  to  smiile  within  when  I  hear  his  kind  and  affec- 
tionate condolence  with  my  future  prospects,  so  dark  and 
cloudy  and  cheerless  as  they  seem  to  his  eyes — so  destitute 
of  all  promise  of  what  the  world  deems  happiness  or  com- 
fort. Blessed  be  God,  we  have,  as  Hare  says,  'the  rays  of 
a  sun  warming  our  hearts,  and  enlightening  our  eyes,  in  the 
most  gloomy  day  of  this  our  earthly  pilgrimage  ' — and  even 
at  this  very  hour,  is  my  heart  ready  to  dance  with  joy  in  the 
conscious  sense  of  innumerable  blessings,  which  the  trea- 
sures of  the  world  could  neither  give  nor  take  away.  Is  it 
not  blissful  beyond  compare,  thus  to  be  taught  to  live  by 
faith  and  not  by  sight — to  see  Him  that  is  invisible,  and 
know  Him  as  our  merciful  Friend  and  loving  Father — to 


1843.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  29 

receive  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  as  ouroni)-  ever  blessed  Lord 
and  Master — to  read,  and  read  with  clear  ej'C  and  quickened 
heart,  that  His  zuill  is  our  sanctification — and  since  it  is 
His  will,  that  He  will  surely  give  His  Holy  Spirit 
abundantly  to  those  who  ask  Him." 

"  St.  John's  College,  March  5,  1843. 

.  ..."  I  have  often  been  almost  afraid  to  register  a  just 
thought  or  worth}'^  sentiment,  to  which  in  conversation  or 
reflexion  I  may  have  been  led,  lest,  so  doing,  I  should  be 
harbouring  vanity  and  self-conceit  ;  not  seeing  all  the  while, 
that  the  most  corrupt  form  of  pride  and  self-confidence  was 
that  which  called  such  thought  '  my  own,'  and  did  not 
instantly  acknowledge  it,  so  far  as  it  was  not  false  and  evil, 
as  the  gift  of  God.  In  zvords  perhaps  I  should  have  done 
so  ;  but,  in  point  of  fact,  I  did  not,  but  was  always  haunted 
by  the  feeling  that  /  had  found  this  or  that,  and,  blessed  be 
God,  hating  such  feeling,  while  it  still  clung  to  me,  the  only 
remedy  I  could  think  of  was  resolutely  to  stamp  it  under 
foot,  and  with  it  to  bless  the  Giver  of  all  good  and  perfect 
gifts,  in  the  use  of  the  powers  of  mind  and  enjoyment  of  the 
faculties  which  He  has  intrusted  to  me,  and  has  promised 
to  sanctify,  strengthen,  and  enlighten  for  those  who  fear  and 
seek  Him.  .  .  . 

"  I  now  see  therefore  that  my  thoughts,  my  w^ords,  my 
actions,  so  far  as  they  are  not  corrupt  and  evil,  are  not 
mine,  but  God's  ;  that  I  must  be  very  careful  not  to  waste 
them,  or  forget  to  cherish  them  ;  that  I  must  be  thank- 
ful to  have  received  any  the  least  of  such  mercies  ;  and 
humbled  that  pride  and  selfishness  are  still  seeking  to 
hold  back  my  spirit  from  His  praise.  I  perceive  now 
wherein  I  erred  before.  I  shrunk  then  from  the  abuse  of 
these  things  ;  I  now,  blessed  be  God,  see  partly  how  I 
may  use  them  to  His  glory.  And  I  see  also  that  the 
same  change  must  pass  o\'er  the  whole  character  of  my 
Christian  practice.  It  is  a  much  more  difficult  lesson  per- 
haps to  learn  to  use,  than  not  to  abuse.  The  one  may  be 
attained  by  practising  a  few  stern  resolutions — touch  not, 


30  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

■ V 

taste  not,  handle  not — and  when  the  first  throes  of  the 
mutilated  limb  are  over,  there  will  be  no  more  trouble 
about  it,  though  sometimes  (as  they  say)  an  indistinct 
feeling,  as  if  the  hand  were  still  in  its  place,  or  a  craving  of 
the  system  for  its  absent  member,  unnaturally  lost  to  it  : 
but  it  is  a  work  of  watchfulness  and  industry  for  life  to 
employ  those  fingers  rightly  in  the  duties  which  become  it  ; 
and  yet  we  do  not  question  which  is  the  happier  state  of 
the  two.  The  parallel  is  obvious  ;  and  I  have  too  much 
been  accustomed  to  take  the  Stoical  view  of  religious 
truth,  undisturbed,  it  may  have  been,  by  many  severe 
checks  to  it,  through  the  solitary  nature  of  my  life  at 
Harrow,  perhaps  partly  led  to  it  by  these  circumstances. 
Thanks  be  to  God  that  I  no  longer  see  things  thus  ! 
"  ....  I  think  that  you  have  exactly  pointed  to  your 
want,  when  you  said  that  you  believed  it  would  be  well  for 
you  to  be  employed  in  the  labour  of  active  love  for 
others.  ...  I  have  found  it  a  source  of  unspeakable  benefit 
to  me — at  least,  1  think  so — and  seem  to  miss,  at  present, 
the  cheering,  humanizing,  satisfying,  feeling  for  the  actual 
wants  and  sorrows  of  my  fellow  men,  which  my  acquaint- 
ance with  them  at  Harrow  was  the  means  of  fostering.  .  .  . 
We  are  not  required,  indeed,  to  step  presumptuously  into 
the  path  of  unappointed  difficulty  or  danger,  nor  to  trample 
under  foot  the  pleasant  things  of  God — which  He  has  given 
to  be  used  with  thankfulness  and  prayer — nor  to  tax 
our  strength  beyond  the  claims  of  health,  and  court 
wantonly  sickness  or  sorrow ;  but  we  are  to  stand,  with 
loins  girded  and  lights  burning,  as  servants  ready  for  their 
Master's  work — watching  with  quick  eye,  with  nimble  foot, 
with  ready  heart  in  his  service — listening  in  all  directions 
for  the  sound  of  His  voice  in  the  events  of  His  Providence, 
calling  gently,  in  the  tone  which  none  but  Love  will  hear, 
for  the  presence  of  His  Friends,  for  one  whom  He  loveth, 
who  is  sick,  or  in  prison,  or  sorrowful,  or  needy,  or  suffering 
— and  blessed  indeed  is  that  servant  whom  His  Lord  when 
He  calleth  shall  find  thus  meekly  waiting,  and  prepared 
for  His  work." 


1843-  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  31 


In  the  following  passages  he  speaks  of  Mr.  Maurice,  when 

he  was  beginning  to  know  him  by  his  books  alone. 

1843- 

.  .  .  .  "  How  truly  do  I  love  Maurice  !  Daily  more  and  more 
of  truth  appears  to  me  in  his  book."  .... 

1843. 

.  ..."  I  have  procured  to-day  (by  purchase,  after  much  hesi- 
tation on  the  ground  of  economy,  the  necessity  for  which 
limits  my  expenditure  in  all  directions)  Maurice's  Kingdom 
of  Christ — and  have  read  the  first  chapter  of  the  second 
volume,  which  I  hope  to  peruse  regularly,  day  by  day. 

.  ..."  I  was  told  to-day  that  one  of  our  Fellows is  a 

'  Maurician.'  I  am  not  quite  sure  that  my  informant,  whose 
opinions  are  very  '  high '  indeed,  quite  understood  the 
character  he  assigned  him.  ...  If  a  true  Maurician,  he 
must  have  all  avenues  open,  I  should  suppose,  for  an  inquirer 
after  truth  to  reach  his  heart." 

"  What  I  meant  in  reference  to  Mr.  Maurice's  principle  was 
this — that  there  are  very  very  few  who  discern  the  very 
great  distinction  between  the  two  endeavours — to  be  loved, 
and  to  love,  and  therefore  very  few  who  really  set  themselves 
to  labour  for  the  grace  which  shall  enable  them  to  love,  as 
Christians.  I  met  the  other  day  with  a  poor  young  fellow, 
who  has  come  here  for  study,  a  weak,  helpless  being  he 
seems  to  be — in  mind,  I  mean — his  conversation  painfully 
slow  and  indistinct,  and  his  ideas  scarcely  sufficient  to 
procure  an  intelligible  reply  to  an  ordinary  question.  Now 
it  was  my  duty  as  a  Christian  to  love  him.  So  far,  I  hope 
the  recollection  that  '  I  am  not  my  own '  did  prevail  over 
my  natural  tendency  to  impatience  that  I  did  not  exhibit 
any  in  my  own  manner  or  language,  and  even  strove  to  be 
pleasant  with  him,  and  proposed  to  walk  with  him,  which 
brought  me  into  continual  contact  with  a  very  trying 
description  of  character.  (This  is,  of  course,  just  what  any 
Christian  would  have  done  in  similar  circumstances — who 
felt  as  such — I  only  mention  the  details  for  the  sake  of  my 
argument.)    But  all  the  while  how  bitterly  was  I  conscious  of 


32  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  i. 


the  want  of  the  principle  of  love  within  !  I  did  not  truly 
love  him,  because  I  did  not  deeply  feel  my  own  insignificance 
and  unworthiness,  and  the  unspeakable  mercies  I  had 
myself  received  at  His  hands,  who,  for  our  sakes,  became 
poor,  that  we  through  His  poverty  might  be  made  rich. 
Well,  my  belief  is  that  theoretical  love  requires  to  be 
greatly  modified  before  it  becomes  Christian :  and  that  this 
will  only  be  through  the  pressure  of  severe  affliction,  which 
in  a  very  short  time  will  often  draw  the  soul  nearer  to  its 
God  and  Saviour,  and  subdue  it  to  his  will  ;  or  else  by  actual 
labour  and  exertion,  in  act,  in  word,  or  else  in  thought  and 
prayer  for  others — by  obedience  of  the  truth,  by  practising 
to  love,  before  even  we  have  learnt  to  take  pleasure  in  it. 
See  I  St.  Peter  i.  22." 

"  St.  John's  College, 
"  W^edncsday  Evening,  October  iz^^  1843. 

"  The  above  date  must  long  be  a  memorable  one  for  Cam- 
bridge. .  .  .  Yesterday  was  a  day  of  rain  and  storm,  and  we 
looked  ominously  at  each  other,  as  we  began  to  presage  a 
wet  and  boisterous  morrow.  But,  thanks  be  to  God,  not  so. 
The  air  was  dry  this  morning,  and  the  sky  hopeful,  and  by 
and  by,  as  the  day  grew,  there  was  every  assurance  that 
our  best  desires  would  be  realised.  And  indeed  the  weather 
has  been  exquisite — nothing  could  have  been  more  charm.ing. 
We  could  stand  for  hours  in  the  open  air  without  the  least 
inconvenience  or  wish  to  go  in.  .  .  .  The  streets  were,  of 
course,  filled  with  the  peasants  of  the  neighbourhood,  and 
townspeople,  and  it  was  enough  to  fill  one's  eyes  with  tears 
to  look  at  them,  and  behold  the  blessed  triumph  of  Majesty ' 
in  their  hearts.  .  .  ,  However,  we,  the  University,  were 
soon  gathered  all  within  the  great  Court  of  Trinity,  there 
to  await  the  Queen's  arrival  ;  and  here  I  had  an  excellent 
opportunity  of  seeing  that  marvellous  person.  Lord  Lynd- 
hurst,  with  his  keen  eye,  and  his  face  full  of  history.  At 
last  the  hour  came,  and  the  Queen  was  among  us.  I  cannot 
write  you  a  long  detail  of  these  proceedings  (and  I  know 
very  well  you  do  not  much  care  to  hear  it).     ...     I  may 


1843.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  33 


just  say  that  from  my  office  as  Taxer  I  had  a  very  good 
position  in  the  procession  to  present  the  address,  which  the 
Queen  received  in  Trinity  College  Hall.  The  enthusiasm 
of  the  men,  when  Her  Majesty  entered  the  gates  (the  Royal 
carriages  are  the  only  ones  that  ever  do  enter  in  this  manner, 
I  believe)  was  magnificent,  and  evidently  pleased  her. 
After  she  had  gone  up  into  the  Lodge,  and  presented  herself 
at  the  window,  we  were  formed  around  the  Quadrangle,  all 
the  members  of  the  University,  in  proper  order  ;  and  in  due 
course  we  advanced  to  the  Hall,  and  I  got  a  very  good 
position  in  the  second  or  third  rank  to  hear  the  Queen's  and 
Prince's  replies  to  the  addresses.  After  this  the  Queen  went 
to  King's  College  Chapel,  where  we  were  all  admitted  to 
the  Ante-chapel  (the  favoured  ones,  not  including  myself,  to 
the  Choir).  In  such  a  position,  and  outside  the  real  chapel, 
it  was  necessary  and  right,  I  trust,  to  consider,  in  some 
degree,  that  the  true  worship  and  recognition  of  Majesty  is 
religion.  This  evening  we  have  (all  down  to  M.A.'s, 
Fellows  of  Colleges)  attended  a  levee  at  half-past  nine,  and 
been  presented  in  due  form  one  by  one.  The  Queen  has 
dispensed  generally  I  believe,  with  '  kissing  hands ' :  but 
I  suppose  this  presentation  has  all  the  efficacy  of  a  Court 
affair,  and  would  entitle  us  to  be  presented  at  a  foreign 
Court.  Once  more,  let  me  desire  to  be  thankful  for  the 
blessed  day  we  have  had,  so  bright  and  beautiful ;  and  now 

we  wait  for  the  events  of  to-morrow.     Excuse,  dear ,  this 

hasty  line,  and  the  emptiness  of  it,  by  the  nature  of  the 
occasion."    .    .    . 

^^  Sunday  Evening,  November  19,  1S43. 

.  .  .  "  What,  I  thought  to-da}',  looking  into  Baxter's  Saint's 
Rest,  were  these  things  which  St.  Paul  saw,  but  could  not 
utter  ?  The  thought  glanced  across  me  for  the  moment  (but 
I  have  not  yet  considered  the  context),  did  he  reall)'  refer  to 
the  mysteries  of  Heaven,  as  I  have  usually  imagined,  or  not 
rather  to  the  new  views  of  the  Divine  truth  which  broke 
in  upon  his  soul — when,  after  years  of  a  rigid  and  hard  ser- 
vice in  ignorance  and  unbelief,  the  great  secret  burst  upon 
him  of  the  Love  of  God,  of  that  Love  declared  on  every 
VOL.   T.  D 


34  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

side  in  every  way,  but  specially  manifested  in  the  giving  of 
His  Son — and  was  it  the  joy  which  swelled  his  own  heart,  in 
the  full  perception  of  this  long-hidden  Wisdom,  which  was  too 
big  for  him  to  utter — which  none  can  iinpart  by  words,  but 
the  Spirit  of  God,  by  breathings  '  which  are  not  uttered '  ?  " 

^^  December  g,  1843. 
.  .  .  .  "  Last  evening  I  dined  at  Trinity  Lodge  with  the  American 
Minister,  Mr.  Everett.  The  conversation  turned  principally 
on  Shakespeare,  and  one  or  two  points  of  it  were  interest- 
ing, though  on  the  whole  the  Minister  was  not  brilliant. 
The  question  was  whether  Shakespeare  intended  all  the 
meaning  which  others  found  in  his  words.  Everett  thought 
not ;  that  words  were  capable  of  several  constructions— and 
different  persons  would  take  the  same  in  different  senses 
and  with  diftercnt  effect ;  and  told  us  an  anecdote  of 
Mathews,  who,  when  in  America,  gave  among  his  theatrical 
exhibitions  (public  or  private)  a  speech  of  Grattan's,  in  a 
saddened  and  mournful  tone,  which  he  himself  (Everett)  and 
most  other  boys  had  been  used  to  spout  with  great  fire 
and  energy.  Archdeacon  Sharp  protested  against  getting 
double  senses  out  of  his  poetry  ;  it  was  not  always  certain 
that  he  knew  his  own  meaning  (we  had  a  little  laugh  at  the 
Archdeacon  for  this  ;  though,  of  course,  he  did  not  intend  it 
in  its  full  extent)  ;  but  certainly  no  true  man,  as  Shakespeare, 
would  have  had  more  than  one  meaning,  and  that  we  were 
bound  to  search  for  and  maintain,  if  we  would  do  justice  to 
the  poet.  The  Master  of  Trinity,  Whewell,  thought  that 
ideas  were  often  latent  in  the  minds  of  great,  or  even  of 
most,  men,  which  they  often  were  unable  distinctly  to 
express,  but  sparkles  of  which  glimpsed  out  now  and  then 
in  their  writings  :  and  it  would  therefore  be  hard  to  say 
that  those  meaning-s  which  seem  true  and  forcible,  and  reallv 
drawn  from  Shakespeare's  words,  were  not  in  an  embryo  or 
indistinct  shape  present  to  his  own  mind  ;  and  Professor 
Willis  confirmed  this  view,  which  I  take  not  to  be  very  far 
from  the  truth,  by  calling  attention  to  the  fact  that  such  is 
certainly  the  case  in  scientific  matters — where  we  find  hints 


1844-  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  35 

among  the  older  writers  of  discoveries  made  centuries  after, 
and  only  not  made,  because  not  distinctly  realised  by  them- 
selves. So  I  have  given  you  the  table-talk,  and  now  my 
pupil  is  coming  and  the  clock  is  striking." 

"  St.  John's  College, 

">//  9,  1844. 

.  .  .  .  "  Arnold's  Life  is  such  a  solemn  book.     The  thought  of 
so  much  intellectual  might  in  a  moment  brought  low — a 
voice  so  full  of  truth  and  tenderness  silenced  in  the  midst 
of  its  joyful  utterances — a  heart  so  manly  and  ardent,  in 
the  fulness  of  its  warmth  and  affection,  touched  by  the  cold 
hand  of  Death — is  very  awful,  and  humbling,  and,  would  to 
God    it    may   be    with    me,    quickening — that    we    do    the 
Master's  work,  not  minding  our  own  will,  while  it  is  called 
to-day.    Strange  that  the  night  before  his  death  (he  went 
to  bed  healthy,  to  all   appearances,  and  happy  ;  but  in  the 
morning  two  short  hours   of  pain  removed  him  to  his  rest) 
he  wrote   in  his   diary:  'I    might   almost  say,    "  Vixi "    (I 
have  lived   my  life),    ambition    is  completely    mortified,  I 
would  only  retire  from  the  public  eye,  instead  of  coming 
fonvard.'      Blessed  be  God,  who  gives  us  power  to  discern 
the  reality  of  things,  the  sure  presence   of  things  unseen  ; 
and  thanks  be  to  Him  who  has  filled  the  air  with  melody 
and  covered  the  earth,  as  I  see  from  my  window,  with  loveli- 
ness, that  the  strength  of  present  evil  may  not  prevail  to 
tempt  our  poor  feeble  spirits  to  forget  that  He  is  good — our 
Father — our  Everlasting  Friend.     Oh  let  us  drink  in,  when 
we  can,  the  joy  of  God's  Creation    around    us,  and  look 
cheerfully  upward    in    our   sorrows.      We  are  prisoners  of 
hope,  and  our  sighings  will  reach  Him,  and   He  will  give 
us   of  His    peace   at   last.      Think  of   life   as    a   glorious 
struggle  for  immortality,  beneath  the  word  and  with  the 
presence  of  our  God." 

"  St.  John's  College,  CAMBRmoE, 
^''  July  29,  1844. 

.  .  .  "  How  the  recollection  of  a  parent's  presence — though,  like 
my  own  dear  mother,  gathered  with  those  who  rest — should 

D  2 


36  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  r. 


hallow  our  solitude,  and  subdue  our  spirits  in  thought- 
fulness  and  reverential  fear,  such  as  shall  fulfil  for  us  that 
blessed  ministr}^,  which  they  were  commissioned  to  discharge 
for  us,  even  when  their  bodily  form  is  no  more  visibly 
present  with  us,  and  help  to  keep  our  hearts  in  sober 
thought  of  the  spiritual  world,  and  in  the  holy  fear  of  our 
Father  in  Heaven.  It  is.  a  beautiful  passage  of  Martineau  : 
*  Often  does  the  friend  or  parent  then  first  live  for  us,  when 
death  has  withdrawn  him  from  our  eyes,  and  given  him  over 
exclusively  to  our  Jiem'ts ;  at  least  I  have  known  a  mother 
among  the  sainted  blest  sway  the  will  of  a  thoughtful  child 
far  more  than  her  living  voice — brood  with  a  kind  of  serene 
omnipresence  over  his  affections,  and  sanctify  his  passing 
thought  by  the  mild  vigilance  of  her  pure  and  loving 
eye ;  and  what  better  life  could  she  have  for  him  than 
this  .?'"..,. 

"  St.  John's  College, 

'■'■August  24,  1844. 

.  .  .  "  I  don't  know  any  thought  which  quiets  me  more, 
when  disposed  to  complain  of  my  own  lot,  than  that  of 
servants — domestic,  I  mean — so  completely  (the  greater  and 
best  part  of  them)  without  hope  of  settlement  for  them- 
selves in  life  ;  without  friends,  to  live  and  love  with  them, 
except  (perhaps)  a  Christian  master  and  mistress  ;  without 
time  at  their  own  command,  or  opportunity  of  study — in 
fact,  I  look  on  them  with  some  feeling  of  pity  and  sympathy, 
but  knowing  that  He  giveth  more  grace,  and,  doubtless, 
supplies  them   with  peace  and   comfort  by  the  way.  .  .  . 

I  have  detained  my  letter  a  post,  in  order  that  I  may  be 
able  to  communicate  by  it  the  contents  of  a  letter  which 
lay  upon  my  table  this  morning  from  Lord  Effingham,  with 
one  beside  it  from  your  uncle  Bickersteth.  I  have  not  yet 
read  either  of  them,  nor  shall  I  till  the  morning  ;  though  I 
have  just  caught  a  glimpse  of  Lady  E.'s  name  in  your 
uncle's,  which  I  opened  and  found  within  it  an  enclosure 
of  an  Appendix  to  his  book  on  Prophecy,  certainly  very 
interesting  as  it  contains  some  extracts  from  a  correspon- 
dence very  recently  laid   before  the  House  from  our  and 


r844.  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  37 

other  Christian  Governments  with  the  Ottoman  Porte,  the 
result  of  which  was,  after  a  great  deal  of  most  determined 
opposition  through  the  decisive  character  of  the  Moham- 
medan Law,  but  after  a  magnificent  letter  from  Lord 
Aberdeen,  strong  and  straightforward  in  requiring  licence 
for  the  profession  of  Christianity  in  the  Turkish  dominions — 
that  on  the  21st  of  last  April,  an  official  declaration  was 
made  that  henceforward  the  punishment  of  death  should 
cease  to  be  inflicted  on  those  forsaking  Islamism,  the 
inevitable  consequence,  if  detected,  of  such  a  step  before 
this    time.       This    your    uncle    justly    considers    a    very 

momentous  step 

"  Lord  Effingham  writes  to  say  that  the  severance  of  the 
Livings  is  going  on  (your  uncle  says  is  almost  completed) 
and  that  he  intends  to  offer  me  the  presentation  of  St. 
Mary's — ^^492  per  annum  without  house."  .... 

The  alternative  to    his    acceptance   of  Forncett    was    the 

Hcadmastership   of  a    "  College "   at    Putney,   of  which    he 

wrote : — 

"  September  2,  1S44. 

" is  misled  by  the  title  of  the  College,  which  must  be 

changed,  it  deceives  everyone.  The  College  is  not  intended 
to  educate  Civil  Engineers,  but  to  give  a  general  practical 
education,  in  contradistinction  from  the  exclusively  classical 
and  Literary  [one]  of  Public  Schools.  This  will  certainly  be 
an  excellent  preparation  for  Engineering,  but  will  serve  the 
purposes  of  any  gentleman  not  intended  for  one  of  the 
three  Professions — especially  for  colonists.  It  embraces 
Classics,  but    more    decidedly  Mathematics,    and  Practical 

Science.     I  quite  enter  into 's  views  about  the  labour  it 

would  entail — it  would  be  immense,  I  know :  and  though 
in  some  respects  I  do  feel  myself  qualified  for  the  charge, 
I  know  that  I  am  deficient  in  others.  ...  I  propose  to 
go  down  to  Forncett  about  the  14th,  and  see  the  place — 
there  maybe  a  nice  cottage  to  be  secured  in  the  village.  .  .  I 
hear  that  it  is  a  pretty  place — my  church  a  nice  one  for  its 
small  population  of  300 — with  a  tJiatcJicd  roof     I  sometimes 


38  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  C  GLEN  SO.  chap.  i. 

think  how  I  shall  like  the  quiet  and  solitude  after  all  the 
bustle  of  my  life :  but  then  Hooker  and  Herbert  were 
happy  in  their  country  cures,  and  by  the  grace  of  God  so 
may  we  be.  It  will  be — I  feel  it — a  little  trial  to  leave  my 
College — as  it  was  to  leave  Harrow — as  it  will  EVER  be  to 
leave  places  and  persons  dear  to  us — but  God  sends  us 
solace  for  all  such  sorrowing,  and  ■  sweetens  our  cup  with 
rnerc}'." 

"  St.  John's  College, 

"  September  lo,  1844. 

.  .  .  "I  am  very  thankful  that  the  decision  [which  he  himself  had 
made]  is  on  the  side  of  the  living.  With  all  its  allurements 
and  promises,  I  have  great  reason  to  bless  God  that  I  did 
not  accept  the  Putney  offer,  as  I  feel  more  distinctly  that 
the  duties  of  the  place  were  far  less  suited  to  my  own  gifts 

and   temper   than    to    Mr.    C ,   the    present    Principal. 

Strange  that  it  should  be  the  same  to  whom  I  transferred 
the  Moderatorship."  .  .  . 

"  St.  John's  College, 
"  Nove7nber  3,  1 844,  Sunday  Evening. 

.  .  .  "  You  know  what  I  think  about  '  analysing  our  lives 
and  souls.'  I  think,  in  the  perfection  of  Christianity  we 
ongJit  to  do  so — and  bear  to  look,  even  upon  all  the  evil 
which  we  must  find  there — ^just  as  your  theory  with  regard 
to  persons'  character  and  conduct  (and  in  which  for  a  true 
Christian  I  very  much  agree)  is  that  we  ought  to  look  at 
them  in  the  light  of  the  Truth,  and  not  close  our  eyes  to 
what  is  faulty,  though  we  may  in  charity  cover  up  the  fault 
from  others — and  vet,  if  we  agree  to  do  this,  as  I  think  we 
may  and  must,  we  can  only  do  so  with  the  hope,  and  in 
God's  strength,  the  resolution  to  love  them  no  less,  as  Chris- 
tians should  love  their  brethren  and  fellowmen,  for  the 
discovery  :  so  I  believe  we  must  watch  closely  our  hearts — 
our  motives  and  springs  of  action — and  finding,  as  we  shall, 
too  many  of  them  faulty  and  evil,  we  must  not  therefore  be 
vexed  and  fretful — this  would  come  of  pride  and  self-com- 
placency— nor   yet    cast    down    and    discouraged  :    but  we 


1 844-  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  39 

must  expect  to  find  much  that  is  defective — much  to  be 
corrected — we  must  make  the  discovery  with  humihation 
and  the  increased  sense  of  our  need  of  that  cleansing  blood 
and  sanctifying  Spirit— and  we  must  the  more  diligently 
use  the  means  of  Grace  and  put  ourselves  in  the  way  of 
God's  Gracious  Influences  in  the  path  of  our  duties,  so  that 
we  may  be  purged  and  sanctified  to  His  Will.  '  Keep  thy 
heart  with  all  diligence,  for  out  of  it  are  the  issues  of  life.' " 

.  .  .  ,  "  I  send  the  Latin  Sermon  which  was  duly  preached 
this  morning,  though  not  without  some  little  confusion  as 
to  the  time  of  delivery — from  the  interesting  fact  that  (as 
the  Esquire  Bedell  informed  me)  everybody  '  had  forgotten 
all  about  it.'  He  said  '  everybody '  including  probably  the 
'  Esquire '  himself,  the  V.C.  and  Professor,  the  University 
Marshal  and  the  BeIlringer—\v^on  which  last  functionary 
the  movements  of  the  University  seem  in  a  measure  to 
depend  in  these  days  of  skeleton  forms  and  withered 
representatives  of  antique  usages — for  m}'  sermon  should, 
I  suppose,  have  been  introductory  to  the  labours  of  the 
Term — a  stirring  up  of  the  '  Clerici '  and  Educators  of  our 
body  to  discharge  faithfully  their  parts  in  the  progress  of  it — 
or  some  such  laudable  end  it  should  have  aimed  at,  and  not 
merely  the  keeping  the  five  aforesaid  individuals,  who 
composed  my  congregation,  upon  the  tenterhooks  of  cold 
and  discomfort,  for  some  15  minutes.  I  have  omitted 
the  Clerk  however,  who,  having  a  fee  of  4/-  depending  on 
the  occasion,  probably  (a'/^  recollect  the  little  matter — and  I 
wonder  he  did  not  give  the  Sexton  a  remembrancer.  I 
omitted,  with  due  regard  to  the  weather  and  auditory,  the 
part  included  between  brackets." 

...."*  Human  nature,  trained  in  the  School  of  Christianity 
throws  away  as  false  the  delineation  of  piety  in  the  disguise 
of  Hebe,  and  declares  that  there  is  something  higher  than 
happiness — that  thought  which  is  ever  full  of  care  and  truth 
is  better  far — that  all  true  and  disinterested  affection,  which 
often  is  called  to  mourn,  is  better  still — that  the  devoted 


40  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  l. 

allegiance  of  conscience  to  duty  and  to  God — which  ever 
has  in  it  more  of  penitence  than  of  joy — is  noblest  of  all.' 
But  I  must  not  go  on  in  this  way  filling  up  my  sheet  with 
other  men's  words,  however  good  and  precious,  though,  in 
truth,  I  have  few  thoughts  of  my  own,  now  that  I  have  so 
little  exercise  of  mind  in  writing  and  meditation,  with 
which  to  supply  their  place.  I  have  never  seen  a  book — I 
think  I  may  say — so  full  of  brilliant  and  truthful  passages 
as  this  little  work  (not  excepting  even  Maurice- — as  to  the 
former  epithet)  I  have  given  you  indeed  but  a  most  feeble 
and  unworthy  idea  of  him — but  hope  to  bring  it  with  me 
when  I  see  you  next — but — he  is  James  Martineau,  the 
Unitarian  ! — and  every  now  and  then,  the  most  splendid 
passages  are  followed  by  the  statement  of  the  familiar 
tenets  of  his  sect — I  do  earnestly  hope  that  I  can  bless 
God,  and  giv-e  Glory  to  Him  for  what  He  has  enabled  our 
brother  to  write,  and  to  feel  moreover  that  the  great  truths 
of  Christianity  are  the  very  ones  that  are  wanted  to  give 
coherence  and  unity  to  his  own,  to  convert  the  '  sorrow '  of 
which  he  spoke  so  truly  into  rejoicing,  to  bring  the  warm, 
cheering  and  genial  rays  of  the  sun  to  shine  upon  the  clear, 
cold  air,  which  he  would  have  us  breathe  in.  Alas !  we 
could  not,  and  live  :  but  now  have  we  Christ  in  us — not 
merely  before  us,  or,  metaphorically  within  us,  but  dwelling 
in  us  by  His  Spirit,  and  we  in  Him.  Macmillan  (the  book- 
seller) named  it  to  me,  and  said  he  was  so  moved  by 
reading  it,  that,  though  knowing  nothing  of  the  author,  he 
wTote  to  recommend  to  him  Maurice's  Kingdom  of  Christ 
and  he  has  since  thanked  him  very  warmly  for  the  sugges- 
tion. I  think  Mr.  Maurice  would  like  to  read  the  book, 
Martineau' s  Disconrsesy 

Immediately  after  his  marriage,  which  took  place  on  the  8th 
of  January,  1846,  Mr.  Colenso  began  his  work  at  Forncett. 
It  was  not  without  its  difficulties,  arising  chiefly  from  the 
changes  rendered  necessary  by  the  division  of  the  parishes. 

In  a  letter  dated  May  6,   1846,  to  Mr.  Ferguson,  he  men- 


1 847.  LIFE  AT  FORNCETT.  41 

tions,  first,  that  till  his  house  at  Forncett  could  be  built  he 
has  been  obliged  to  take  a  country  house,  distant  about  two 
miles  from  his  church,  and  speaks  of  the  serious  inconvenience 
thus  added  to  the  division  of  work  between  parish  and  pupils, 
which  he  had  already  felt  to  be  a  great  drawback  to  his  use- 
fulness. Speaking,  next,  of  the  duties  of  sponsors  in  baptism, 
he  confesses  his  inability  to  see  how  a  Christian  man  can  take 
that  responsibility  upon  himself,  or  make  the  required  pro- 
mises for  the  child  of  parents  neither  of  whom  is  a  communicant, 
or  perhaps  even  a  church-goer. 

"  It  docs  appear  to  me  that  the  Dissenters  have  just  cause  to 
complain  of  Church  baptism  if  it  is  so  prostituted, — at  any 
rate  that  we,  ministers,  are  bound  to  set  forward  the  Truth 
that,  however  charitable  a  work  it  is  to  bring  the  little  ones 
to  Holy  Baptism  (thank  God,  we  do  not  believe  them  to  be 
then  only  first  taken  under  the  love  of  God  in  Christ, 
though  formally  taken  into  the  Christian  Covenant  and 
admitted  to  all  its  hopes  and  promises),  still  it  is  but  a 
mockery  of  God  for  careless  parents  to  bring  their  children 
to  the  font,  or  to  get  others  to  bring  them,  and  that  a 
true  Christian  cannot  become  a  sponsor,  except  on  these 
conditions,  (i)  that  he  shall  have  reasonable  ground  of 
charitable  hope  that  the  child  will  be  Christianly  brought 
up,  (2)  have  the  permission  of  free  access  to  the  family? 
when  opportunities  permit,  for  observation  and  instruction 
of  the  child,  and  (3)  have  himself  a  fixed  and  hearty 
resolution  by  God's  help  to  discharge  his  duty  towards  it." 

To  THE  Rev.  T.  P.  Ferguson. 

'■'■May  10,  1847. 
*'  Should  you  be  willing,  or  able,  if  asked,  to  go  as  super- 
intendent of  the  proposed  mission  to  Borneo }  At  present 
my  brother-in-law  is  going,  and  I  am  sure  will  go  with  his 
wife  and  two  children,  unless  a  better  person  than  himself 
offers  to  take  his  place.  He  is  in  many  respects  admirably 
suited   for  the  post ;  but  you,  1   think,  are  more  so,  if  the 


42  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

Providence  of  God  permits  your  own  mind  to  look  consent- 
ingly  upon  the  proposition.  I  take  it  for  granted  that  you 
know  the  circumstances  under  which  this  mission  is  sent 
out.  If  not,  and  if  you  desire  to  become  acquainted  with 
one  of  the  most  interesting  narratives  of  our  times,  you 
must  read  Keppel's  account  of  the  anti-pirate  expedition  to 
Borneo,  and  of  Mr.  Brooke,  who  lias  in  a  most  extraordinary 
manner  been  placed  in  the  supreme  authority  as  Rajah  of  a 
large  district  of  the  island,  and  is  under  the  most  promising 
auspices  desiring  to  introduce  education  and  the  truth 
among  the  people. 
"Now  should  you  and  your  wife  be  willing  or  able  to  go? 
For  myself  I  would  joyfully  go  to-morrow,  but  that  the  iron 
grasp  of  a  large  '  ces  alienum '  compels  me  to  forego  the 
wish  :  it  is  a  sore  punishment  for  past  improvidence."  ^ 

It  was  not  long  after  this  time  that  the  earthly  life  of  his 
younger  brother  Thomas  was  cut  short.  Not  deterred  by  his 
other  heavy  obligations,  Mr.  Colenso  had  provided  for  this 
brother's  education  first  at  Harrow,  then  at  Cambridge,  which 
at  his  own  wish  was  afterwards  exchanged  for  Oxford.  Of 
Thomas  Colenso  I  can  speak  from  personal  recollection  as  a 
young  man  of  very  high  promise.  We  were  fellow-collegians, 
at  Oxford,  and  I  have  a  pleasant  memory  of  our  intercourse  in 
those  our  undergraduate  days.  All  who  had  the  privilege  of 
his  friendship  or  of  his  acquaintance  felt  for  him  the  respect 
which  is  never  accorded  except  where  there  is  thorough  con- 
scientiousness and  trustworthiness.  Indeed,  he  was  strikingly 
like  his  elder  brother,  not  merely  in  appearance,  but  in  the 
beauty  of  his  character. 

To  THE  Rev.  T.  H.  Steel. 

"  FoRNCETT,  October  19,  1849. 
"  I  never  saw  my  dear  brother  during  his  last  illness  :  and  this 
is  my  greatest  source  of  grief     He  returned  from   Madeira 
1  See  the  note,  page  13. 


1849.  LIFE  AT  FORNCETT.  43 

in  June,  apparently  quite  refreslied  and  revived,  having  had 
a  most  pleasant  ramble  in  Spain.  After  parting  with  his 
pupil  (the  Duke  of  Bucclcuch's  son),  he  came  to  visit  us 
and  spent  a  very  happy  week  at  Forncett,  then  went  into 
Cornwall  to  spend  a  fortnight  with  his  Father,  and  returned 
on  his  way  eastward  to  pay  another  visit.  He  wrote  me  a 
line,  however,  upon  his  way  to  say  that  he  was  detained  at 
Exeter  by  an  attack  of  hzemorrhage,  of  which  he  made  so 
light  a  matter  that  we  entertained  no  serious  apprehensions 
about  him,  till  his  sister  called  to  see  him  on  her  way 
down,  and  found  that  he  was  much  worse  than  we  feared, 
and,  as  soon  as  could  be,  carried  him  home  to  his  father  at 
Lostwithiel.  Here  he  seemed  to  rally  and  one  day  took 
a  walk  of  a  mile  ;  but  that  night  my  sister,  while  writing 
after  all  were  in  bed,  heard  him  coughing  a  good  deal,  and 
after  waiting  some  time  went  up  to  see  how  he  was,  and 
found  him  on  his  knees  with  a  bason  before  him  half  full  of 
blood.      From   that   time   he  began   to  sink   under  all  the 

usual  signs  of  consumption I  was  at  Lostwithiel  on 

Monday,  at  noon,  but  too  late  to  look  upon  his  face  again. 
So  that  I  have  now  only  the  recollection  of  his  cheerful 
calm  face  in  life,  and  apparent  health  ;  and  he  seems  but 
to  have  gone  to  some  far-off  land,  to  be  absent  for  a  season. 
It  does  not  seem  that  he  really  anticipated  so  speedy  a 
removal  until  the  very  last  day.  About  evening  he  asked 
the  surgeon  if  the  sound  he  heard  in  breathing  was  from  the 
discharge  of  tubercles,  or  from  water  in  the  chest.  Being 
told  '  perhaps  from  both  causes,'  '  Then,'  said  he,  speaking 
in  a  loud  full  voice,  such  as  he  had  never  used  in  all  his 
illness,  '  there  is  no  more  hope  for  me  in  this  world,'  and 
calling  for  his  father  and  sister  Sophie,  he  bade  them 
'  Good-bye,'  repeating  again  and  again  '  I  am  going  to  my 
glorious  rest '  After  this  delirium  came  on  him  for  about 
six  hours,  and  then  he  sank  into  a  quiet  sleep  from  which 
he  never  woke  again,  his  passage  into  eternity  being  so 
gentle  that  none  could  mark  exactly  the  moment  of  his 
last  breath.  Altogether  we  have  most  abundant  comfort  in 
our    bereavement.      His    peculiar   form   of  illness,    b}^   the 


44  1-JFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 


rupture  of  blood-vessels,  prevented  his  speaking  much,  till 
those  last  few  hours,  when  he  spoke  loudly  and  incessantly  ; 
but  it  was  plain  that  he  was  gently  reposing  all  the  while 
his  weary  head  upon  the  very  bosom  of  his  Lord,  and  so 
fell  asleep  in  Jesus.  If  we  wanted  confirmation  of  that 
which  his  whole  life  had  been  teaching  us,  it  was  to  be 
abundantly  supplied  by  his  private  papers  and  journals, 
which  show  how  for  many  years  past  he  had  been  living  a 
life  of  faith  in  the  Son  of  God  and  hungering  and  thirsting 

after  righteousness You  have  asked  me  to  tell  you 

something  of  his  last  hours,  and  I  have  done  it,  I  fear  at 
too  great  a  length  ;  but  indeed  it  is  pleasant  to  think  and 
write  of  him,  and  you,  I  am  sure,  will  permit  me  this 
consolation. 
*'  To  turn  now  to  matters  of  another  kind.  .  .  .  Large  as  was 
the  sum  I  got  for  my  Arithmetic,  it  is  all  gone,  and  has  left 
me  very  little  better  off  than  before.  The  reason  is  princi- 
pally the  neglect  and  mismanagement  of  my  architect  who, 
though  a  private  friend,  and  most  fully  aware  of  my  diffi- 
culties, and  my  desire  to  limit  the  expense  of  the  new  house 
to  the  sum  I  borrowed  from  the  Bounty,  has  laid  upon  me 
an  additional  amount  of  debt  to  the  amount  (I  suppose)  of 
about  i^iooo.  Besides  this,  I  have  had  serious  amounts  to 
pay  for  my  poor  father,  and  now  it  has  pleased  God  to  take 
from  us  him  on  whom  I  had  reckoned  as  one  who  would 
bear  half  the  burden  with  me." 

To  THE  Rev.  T.  P.  Ferguson. 

"(?)  1850. 

''It  always  does  me  good  to  hear  from  }-ou,  and  would  do  me 
more  good,  I  am  sure,  to  see  you.  If  it  please  God,  I  shall 
try  to  spend  a  day  with  you  during  my  holidays.  But  I 
must  go  into  Cornwall  to  see  my  father,  who  is  now  far 
advanced  in  years,  and  has  of  late  been  seriously  ailing. 
And  if  I  cannot  get  more  help  for  my  parish  than  I  have  as 
yet  been  able  to  secure,  I  fear  my  time  of  absence  from 
Forncett  will  be  very  much  limited.  .  .  .  The  High  Church 
party  have  (some  of  them)  grossly  maligned  the  character 


1852.  LIFE  AT  FORNCETT.  45 

of  Mr.  Gorham.  I  know  him  personally,  and  whenever  you 
think  of  him,  put  before  your  mind  a  gentleman  and  a  true 
devout  Christian,  of  a  quiet  unobtrusive  spirit,  and  a  truly 
amiable  affectionate  character,  who  has  been  driven  for- 
ward by  the  force  of  circumstances  and  the  violence  of  his 
adversary  to  a  position  of  prominence  and  conflict,  which 
he  would  not  have  desired  for  himself  and  would  be  most 
heartily  glad  to  retire  from,  into  the  calm  and  holy  duties 
of  his  ministry.  Such  is  my  own  impression  of  him.  I  do 
not  AT  ALL  agree  with  his  views  of  Divine  Truth,  so  far  as 
they  arc  Calvinistic  ;  but  I  question  if  he  would  have  wished 
to  have  been  compelled  to  speak  out  his  own  mind  so 
freely.  ...  I  feel  persuaded  that  he  is  not  a  man  to  bring 
forth  Calvinistic  doctrines  prominently  in  the  pulpit,  and  I 
do  not  doubt  that  his  sermons  are  as  mild  and  good  as 
those  of  any  of  his  opponents.  In  fact  he  would  preach 
probably  as  Leighton  did.  I  repeat  that  I  have  no  sympathy 
with  his  doctrinal  views  ;  but  I  love  and  esteem  the  man  for 
his  meek  and  guileless  simplicity,  and  I  detest  the  malice 
and  spite  and  slander  of  his  enemies." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  February  22,  1852. 
[On  the  serious  illness  of  his  wife.] 

"  Our  worst  forebodings  are  confirmed  by  your  letter.  And 
yet  it  was  plain  to  all,  I  think,  that  the  disease  had  a  strong 
hold  on  your  dear  wife,  a  hold  that  could  hardly  be  shaken 
off.  We  felt  to  have  seen  her  for  the  first  and  last  time  in 
this  earthly  state  of  being.  But  thank  God  it  is  possible 
so  to  realise  the  glorious  hope  which  is  given  us  as  to  feel 
that  the  separations  made  by  death  are  often  all  but 
momentary,  the  midnight  partings  of  friends  who  shall 
meet  in  joy  again  to-morrow.  I  pra)^  God  that  you  may 
both  be  sustained  with  this  blessed  consolation,  or  rather 
that  you  may  both  be  able  to  lean  with  a  simple  childlike 
trust  upon  the  love  of  God  our  hcavcnl}-  Father  manifested 
to  us  in  a  thousand  gifts  of  His  mercy  and  goodness — above 


46  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  I. 

all  by  the  witness  of  his  Spirit  in  our  hearts,  teaching  us 
to  cry  Abba,  father.  O  dear  friend  !  what  a  comfort  at 
such  a  time  to  be  able  to  use  our  Saviour's  prayer,  to  know 
that  He  bids  us  say  '  Our  Father,  who  art  in  heaven.' " 

To  THE  Rev.  T.  H.  Steel. 

"  YOR^CT^TT,  January  3,  1853. 
[Speaking  of  the  religious  education  of  children.] 

"  My  two  boys  are  too  small  for  consideration  at  present  in 
the  matter  of  study  ;  but  the  two  little  girls  are  making  a 
little  progress,  at  least  the  elder  (5^).  On  one  point  her 
kowledge,  I  am  afraid,  would  be  considered  by  some  de- 
fective. I  should  like  to  know  what  your  feeling  and 
practice  is  upon  the  point  in  question.  She  knows  nothing 
yet  of  Hell  except  as  Hades,  the  place  of  departed  spirits, 
and  very  naturally  assures  us  that  we  shall  all  go  to  it  when 
we  die.  The  truth  is,  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  set  before 
her  little  mind  the  terrifying  doctrines,  which  are  to  be 
found  inculcated  in  some  of  Watts's  Hymns  for  little  children. 
I  think  you  will  agree  with  me  that  to  teach  a  child  to  love 
its  heavenly  Father  and  to  dread  His  displeasure,  the  loss 
of  His  favour,  and  separation  from  His  presence,  as  the 
most  painful  of  all  punishments,  is  the  true  Christian  way 
of  training  it  for  His  service  here  and  His  glory  hereafter." 

To  THE  Rev.  T.  P.  Ferguson. 

''  April  2S,  1S53. 

"  You  will  wonder  at  not  having  once  heard  from  me  since 
you  left  England.  It  will  require  all  your  faith  in  my 
friendship  and  affection  to  believe  that,  notwithstanding, 
I  have  been  daily  mindful  of  you,  and  have  had  you  much 
in  my  thoughts  and  prayers.  But  so  it  is  ;  and  perhaps 
when  you  have  finished  this  note,  you  will  be  able  to  enter 
more  fully  into  my  feelings,  and  acquit  me  of  any  real  fault 
in  the  matter. 

"  A  great  change  has  come  over  my  circumstances  and  pros- 
pects within  the  last  few  months.     Possibly  hints  may  have 


1 853-  LIFE  AT  FORNCETT.  47 

reached  you  from  other  quarters,  but  not  all  that  has 
occurred.  In  the  first  place  you  will  rejoice  to  hear  that  by 
the  mercy  of  God  I  have  got  rid  of  my  chain  of  debt.  Like 
Peter  in  the  prison,  my  bonds  have  literally  dropped  off:  I 
have  completed  the  National  School  Arithmetic  ;  and  for 
this,  and  my  other  remaining  copyrights  Longmans  have 
paid  me  down  ;{J'2,400,  which  has  enabled  me  to  arrange  for 
the  complete  discharge  of  my  obligations,  principal  and 
interest,  except  for  a  payment  of  about  ;^ioo  a  year  during 
my  aged  father's  life  time, 
"  In  the  second  place  I  have  been  offered,  and  have  accepted, 
the  bishopric  of  Natal,  and  I  earnestly  hope  that,  if  it  please 
God,  it  may  be  put  into  your  heart  to  go  with  me  in  some 
capacity  or  other,  you  may  be  sure  the  best,  and  most 
congenial  to  your  wishes  that  I  can  offer.  .  .  .  There  is, 
I  trust,  a  great  missionary  work  to  be  set  on  foot  there, 
with  decided  support  from  Government,  and  I  do  not  hesi- 
tate to  say,  it  is  the  noblest  field  ever  yet  opened  to  the 
missionary  labours  of  the  Church  in  any  part  of  the 
world." 

Writing  some  weeks  later,  June  3,  he  says  : — 

*'  I  want  you  as  a  friend  and  counsellor  and  supporter,  for 
everything.  I  cannot  conceive  of  any  real  difference  of 
opinion  on  any  point  of  importance  existing  or  arising 
between  us.  I  think  I  know  too  well  both  your  heart  and 
my  own  to  fear  that  we  should  quarrel  about  matters  of  no 
consequence." 

Not  many  weeks  before  his  consecration,  Mr.  Colenso 
dedicated  a  volume  of  sermons  to  Mr.  Maurice.  He  did  so 
partly  as  an  expression  of  deep  friendship  for  the  man,  but 
more  especially  as  a  protest  against  the  attacks  made  upon 
him  by  the  Record  newspaper.  At  this  time  he  still  thought, 
as  he  had  always  thought,  that  the  term  "  eternal  punishment " 
must  mean  not  only  the  lasting  and  undying  hatred  of  God 


48  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

for  all  sin,  but  a  perpetual  retention  in  that  state  of  all  who 
should  once  be  subjected  to  it.  But  he  shrank  with  an  in- 
stinctive repulsion  from  language  such  as  that  of  Augustine 
and  Fulgentius,  and  of  the  modern  writers  who  like  them 
seemed  to  regard  the  state  of  the  lost  as  a  matter  for 
triumphant  exultation.^ 

Thanking  his  friend  for  this  dedication,  Mr.  Maurice  at  the 
same  time  admitted  frankly  that  he  scarcely  knew  what  to  say 
about  it. 

"  If  I  told  you  that  it  delighted  me  beyond  any  praise  I  almost 
ever  received,  I  should  express  but  half  the  truth.  I  should 
convey  a  very  inadequate  expression  of  my  own  feelings  of 
the  generosity  and  courage  which  your  words  manifest,  and 
the  strength  and  hope  which  they  imparted  to  me.  But  I 
should  also  not  let  you  see  the  real  fear  and  distress  which 
your  kindness  occasioned  me.  When  I  consider  the  great 
work  to  which  you  are  called,  and  the  troubles  which  must, 
at  all  events,  await  you  in  it,  I  could  not  but  tremble  lest  I 
had  been  the  means  of  causing  you  new  and  unnecessary 
ones.  I  am  afraid  the  English  bishops — to  say  nothing  of 
the  religious  press— will  visit  upon  you  the  offences  which  a 
large  portion  of  them  is  willing  to  charge  upon  me.  And 
I  could  have  wished  that  you  had  stifled  all  your  regard 
for  me  rather  than  run  this  risk.  Nevertheless,  I  do  so 
thoroughly  and  inwardly  believe  that  courage  is  the  quality 
most  needed  in  a  bishop,  and  especially  a  missionary 
bishop,  that  I  did  at  the  same  time  give  hearty  thanks  to 
God  that  He  had  bestowed  such  a  measure  of  it  upon  you. 

"  You  see  I  am  very  contradictory  in  my  thoughts  about  your 
letter.  But  I  am  most  harmonious  in  my  thoughts  and 
wishes  about  you.  I  am  sure  God  is  sending  you  forth  to 
a  mighty  work,  in  which  you  will  be  able  wonderfully  to 
help  those  who  are  toiling  in  poor  old  England.  .  .  .  May 
God  bless  you  abundantly ;  so  prays  one  upon  whom  you 

^  A  few  months  later  he  published  a  small  volume  of  extracts  from  the 
writings  of  Mr.  Maurice,  with  an  Introduction. 


1 8 5 3-  I-JFE  A  T  FORNCE  TT.  49 

have  conferred  a  greater  kindness  than  you  can  estimate, — 
for  it  has  come  to  me  when  I  needed  it  most."  ^ 

Mr.  Maurice  was  perfectly  right  in  thinking  that  writers 
would  not  be  lacking  in  the  public  journals  to  visit  on  the 
Bishop  designate  of  Natal  the  faults  which  they  laid  to  the 
charge  of  his  friend.  The  note  of  warning  was  sounded  by 
the  "  Record,"  which  pronounced  his  sermons  "  singularly 
deficient  in  the  clear  exposition  of  definitive  Christian  doc- 
trine." Looked  at  after  an  interval  of  more  than  thirty  years 
these  sermons  show  an  instinctive  reluctance  to  the  use  of 
party  shibboleths.  They  point  to  the  future  growth  of  a 
wider  theology,  and  above  all  they  are  evidence  that  the 
man's  heart  was  set  upon  the  search  after  truth,  and  that 
wherever  it  might  be  revealed  to  him,  he  would  acknowledge 
it.  He  could  not  bring  himself  to  believe  that  the  falling  of 
the  tower  in  Siloam  implied  any  judgment  on  the  character  of 
those  who  were  crushed  beneath  its  ruins. 

"  Modern  Science,"  Mr.  Colenso  urged  in  the  very  temperate 
remarks  on  this  article  addressed  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  "  teaches  us  that  the  convulsions  and  apparent 
disorders  of  nature,  floods  and  thunderstorms,  whirlwinds 
and  earthquakes,  are  workings  of  the  great  Creator's  skill 
and  wisdom  for  the  good  of  His  creatures,  are  therefore 
signs  of  His  beneficence.  The  Reviewer  sees  in  them  the 
*  consequences  of  man's  fall,  traces  of  the  corruption  which 
from  man's  heart  has  overflowed  upon  the  world  around 
him.'" 

The  Reviewer,  again,  wished  to  "  uproot  altogether  the  old 
religion  of  the  heathen  mind,"  and  Mr.  Colenso  merely  noted 
his  unwillingness  to  take  a  lesson  from  the  great  Apostle  of 
the  Gentiles 

^*  who,  when  he  preached  among  the  learned  at  Athens,  or  the 
ignorant  at  Lystra,  on  both  occasions  used  the  knowledge 
^  Life  of  Maurice,  ii,  i86. 
VOL.   I.  E 


50  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  i. 

they  had  already  of  the  Truth  to  lead  them  on  to  higher 
views,  from  him  whom  they  ignorantly  worshipped,  up  to  the 
True  and  Living  God." 

There  can  be  little  doubt,  rather  there  is  none,  that  the 
choice  of  Mr.  Colenso  for  missionary  work  in  a  heathen  land 
was  a  blessing  not  only  to  the  heathen  to  whom  he  was  sent, 
but  to  his  countrymen,  to  the  cause  of  truth,  to  the  Church  of 
England,  and  to  the  Church  of  God.  Up  to  this  time  his 
moral  sense  and  spiritual  instincts  lacked  free  play  ;  and,  had 
he  remained  in  England,  those  circumstances  probably  would 
never  have  arisen  which  were  made  the  means  of  evoking  the 
marvellous  strength  of  character  evinced  in  the  great  battle  of 
his  life.  It  was  just  that  appeal  of  the  honest  heart  which  was 
needed  to  call  into  action  the  slumbering  fires.  That  appeal, 
and  his  instantaneous  obedience  to  that  appeal,  were  sneered 
at  as  stupid,  childish,  and  contemptible  :  but  the  questions  of 
the  "  intelligent  Zulu  "  became  for  him  questions  like  those 
which  led  Luther  to  nail  his  theses  on  the  Church  door  at 
Wittenberg,  and  enabled  him  to  break  with  the  force  of  a 
Samson  the  theological  and  traditional  withs  by  which  he  had 
thus  far  been  bound. 


1 


CHAPTER  II 

TEN    WEEKS   IN    NATAL. 

We  have  seen  that  in  his  Cambridge  and  Harrow  days  Mr. 
Colenso  had  turned  a  longing  C}-e  on  the  vast  field  of  mis- 
sionary work.  Even  while  he  saw  no  reason  to  hope  that  he 
might  one  day  be  enabled  to  take  part  in  it  himself,  he  felt 
that  there  could  be  no  higher  call  than  that  which  summoned 
a  man  to  the  conflict  with  dcadl}^  superstition,  ignorance, 
terror  and  sin.  The  longing  which  had  always  filled  his  heart 
was  the  longing  for  growth  in  the  knowledge  of  God,  and  in 
His  Love,  for  increasing  trust  in  a  righteous  Will  which  must 
in  the  end  be  \-ictorious  over  every  thing  that  opposes  it, — 
which  must  in  the  end  destro}-  death.  The  work  of  the  mis- 
sionary was  therefore  to  carry  to  the  uttermost  bounds  of  the 
earth  the  tidings  of  the  all-embracing  love,  and  to  raise  all 
hearts  to  the  thought  of  the  great  consummation  when  every 
rebellious  will  shall  have  been  brought  into  absolute  har- 
mony with  the  Divine  Will.  Now  that  he  had  been  called  to 
this  work  himself,  he  rejoiced  to  go  forth  in  this  spirit  to  the 
help  of  those  who  were  sitting  in  darkness.  Many  things 
might  still  be  perplexing  ;  but  in  all  that  related  to  the  mode 
in  which,  and  the  design  with  which,  the  work  should  be 
carried  on,  there  was  no  hesitation,  there  was  not  even  a 
shadow  of  doubt.  Christian,  heathen,  Turk  or  Jew,  all  were 
the  objects  of  God's  loving  and  Fatherh"  care,  all  were  His 

E  2 


52  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  CHAP.  il. 

children,  though  some  of  them  might  not  know  it,  and  others 
might  openly  defy  Him.  He  went  out,  therefore,  to  Natal, 
resolved  that  no  word  falling  from  his  lips  should  chill  or 
repel  those  whom  he  was  bound  to  cheer  and  comfort.  It  was 
not  his  office  to  inforce  theories  of  human  depravity,  and  of 
the  vindictiveness  of  Divine  punishments.  It  was  his  duty  to 
tell  them  of  One  who  is  of  purer  eyes  than  to  behold  iniquity, 
who,  though  eager  to  receive  the  penitent,  will  by  no  means 
clear  the  guilty,  and  whose  discipline  and  judgement  will 
throughly  purge  away  all  dross,  and  leave  only  the  pure 
ore. 

But  he  was  entering  on  a  field  of  labour  of  which  he  had  no 
personal  experience.     Dr.  Gray's  supervision  of  this  outlying 
portion  of  his  huge  diocese  was,  necessarily,  merely  nominal, 
and  the  condition  of  the  native  population  had  lately  under- 
gone so   many  changes,  that    a    preliminary  survey  of   the 
country  became  a  matter  of  necessity.     This  survey  was  made 
immediately  after  his  consecration,  which  took  place  on  St. 
Andrew's  Day.^  He  sailed  from  Plymouth  December  15,  1853  ; 
reached  Capetown    January  20,   1854;    and,  from  the   same 
steamer  which  had  brought  him  from  England,  he  landed  in 
Natal   on  the    30th  of  January.     The   impressions  received 
during  his  stay  in  the  country  were  given  to  the  world  in  a  little 
volume  bearing  the  title  of  Ten  Weeks  in  Natal.     A  few  years 
later,  when  the  Bishop  had  been  led  to  examine  the  history 
of  the  Pentateuch,  some  of  his  adversaries  professed  to  dis- 
cover in  this  book  plain  signs  of  the  "  shallowness,"  the  "  ignor- 
ance," and  "  precocity  of  judgment "  which,  as  they  said,  was 
to  lead  him  in  the  end  to  complete  shipwreck  of  the  faith. 
To  others  who  have  read  it  dispassionately,  it  has  commended 
itself  as  one  of  the  noblest  amongst  missionary  records,   as 

^  Dr.  Armstrong  was  at  the  same  time  consecrated  Bishop  of 
Grahamstown.  The  sermon  was  preached  by  Dr.  Wilberforce,  Bishop 
of  Oxford. 


1 


i854-  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  S3 

exhibiting  everywhere  an  unwearied  zeal,  a  large-hearted 
generosity,  and  a  very  real  charity  for  all  men. 

The  picture  which  he  draws  from  his  own  observation  of  the 
country  and  its  inhabitants  is  conscientiously  accurate  ;  but 
the  same  accuracy  cannot  be  claimed  for  statements  relating 
to  earlier  Zulu  history  which  he  quotes  from  the  accounts  of 
others.  He  had  no  motive  for  extenuating  the  faults,  or  dis- 
paraging the  good  qualities  of  either  white  or  black,  and  he 
was  resolved  that  justice  should  be  done  to  both  alike.  On 
mingling  with  them  he  found  that  the  natives  had  many  good 
qualities,  although  they  and  their  fathers  had  lived  under  the 
rule  of  some  very  sanguinary  chiefs.  About  thirty  years 
before  the  Bishop's  visit  Natal  had  been  wasted  by  the  Zulu 
King  Chaka,  of  whom  the  Bishop  recounts  some  stories  which, 
if  true,  would  give  him  a  title  to  be  ranked  amongst  the 
scourges  of  mankind.  ^  On  the  murder  of  Chaka  his  sceptre 
passed  to  his  brother  Dingaan,  and  from  him  to  another 
brother,  Panda. 

When  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  visited  Natal,  now  some  six 
and  thirty  years  ago,  a  generation  had  sprung  up  which  knew 
not  Chaka,  and  had  but  small  knowledge  of  his  doings. 
Bishop  Gray  found  them  "  humble,  docile,  submissive,"  and 
believed  "that  at  that  time  almost  anything  might  have  been 
done  with  them."  Their  honesty  and  faithfulness  were  proof 
against  temptations,  which  multitudes  of  Englishmen  would 
be  incapable  of  resisting. 

"  The  Insurance  Company,  having  to  send  cash  from  Maritz- 
burg  to  Durban  (52  miles),  would  prefer,  to  any  other  mode 
of  conveyance,  despatching  two  Kafirs  with  it,  sewed  up  in 
belts  about  their  waists.  They  would  send,  with  perfect 
security  in  this  way,  as  much  as  iJ'SOO  for  a  payment  of 
lOJ.  to  each  Kafir," 

^   Ten  Weeks  in  Natal,  p.  224. 


54  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 

On  another  occasion  the  Bishop  of  Natal  says  : — 

"  I  was  speaking  of  the  faithfuhiess  and  honesty  of  the  Kafirs, 
and  observing  that  it  was  not  always  to  be  matched  among 
Englishmen.  'Well,'  said  young  Mr.  Moodie,  'you  seem  to 
have  heard  a  good  many  stories  about  their  honesty.  Now 
let  me  tell  you  a  tale  of  a  different  kind,  in  which  I  was 
concerned  with  them.  About  six  months  ago  I  sold  a  man  a 
spade  for  5^-.  He  paid  me  4^^.  on  the  spot,  and  promised  to 
bring  me  the  \s.  in  the  course  of  a  day  or  two  ;  but  from 
that  time  to  this  I  have  never  seen  or  heard  anything  of 
my  shilling.'  Certainly  it  was  a  formidable  accusation 
against  my  poor  dark-skinned  friend,  and  I  had  nothing  to 
say  on  his  behalf  except  that  I  did  not  suppose  all 
Kafirs  were  equally  virtuous,  and  that  I  thought  it  just 
possible  that  such  a  piece  of  villainy  might  find  its  match  in 
the  good  old  mother-land.  But  while  we  were  talking,  there 
was  a  half-caste  servant,  who  was  within  hearing,  and  who 
was  all  attention  to  the  story.  And  when  presently  his 
young  master  left  the  room,  the  man  went  out  to  tell  him 
that  '  Saul  had  given  the  \s.  to  //////  a  long  while  ago  for 
one  of  his  young  masters  ;  but  he  did  not  know  exactly  for 
whom,  and  had  kept  it  in  his  box  ever  since,  and  there  it 
was  now.'  Mr.  Moodie  was  perfectly  satisfied  with  this 
man's  account  of  the  transaction.  He  was  a  well-tried 
faithful  servant,  and  no  doubt  had  been  perplexed  at  first 
about  the  matter,  and  had,  through  carelessness,  forgotten 
all  about  it  since.  At  any  rate  he  was  a  half-caste — half 
English — not  a  pure  Kafir."  ^ 

But,  honest  and  trustworthy  though  the  natives  might  be, 
it  was  considered  necessary  to  be  firm  and  even  strict  in 
dealing  with  them,  and  to  avoid  over-much  familiarity.  A 
chief  named  Ngoza  came  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  Bishop. 

"  I  happened  to  be  dressing  at  the  time,  and  was  naturally 
unwilling  to  keep  any  one  waiting,  so  was  making  what 
haste  I  could  in  donning  my  apparel.     But  I  was  told  there 

^   Ten  Weeks,  &c.,  p.  122. 


1 854-  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  55 


was  no  necessity  whatever  for  this — that,  in  fact,  it  would 
be  quite  the  thing  to  keep  him  waiting  for  some  time — he 
would,  as  a  matter  of  course,  expect  it — time  was  of  no 
consequence  to  him,  and  he  would  amuse  himself,  somehow 
or  other,  in  the  court-yard  until  I  came  out.  In  due  time  I 
stepped  out  to  him,  and  there  stood  Ngoza,  dressed  neatly 
enough  as  an  European,  with  his  attendant  Kafir  waiting 
beside  him.  I  said  nothing  (as  I  was  advised)  until  he 
spoke,  and,  in  answer  to  a  question  from  Mr.  Green,  said 
that  he  was  come  to  salute  the  '  nkos.'  '  Sakubona,'  I  said  : 
and  with  all  my  heart  would  have  grasped  the  great  black 
hand,  and  given  it  a  brotherly  shake  ;  but  my  dignity  would 
have  been  essentially  compromised  in  his  own  eyes  by  any 
such  proceeding.  I  confess  it  went  very  much  against  the 
grain  ;  but  the  advice  of  all  true  philo-Kafirs,  Mr.  Shepstone 
among  the  rest,  was  to  the  same  effect, — viz.,  that  too  ready 
familiarity,  and  especially  shaking  hands  with  them  upon 
slight  acquaintance,  was.  not  only  not  understood  by  them, 
but  did  great  mischief  in  making  them  pert  and 
presuming."  ^ 

From  the  first  the  Bishop  resolved  that  he  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  arguments  appealing  to  mere  terror ;  and 
from  the  first  he  was  anxious  to  correct  the  mischievous 
impressions  left  by  such  arguments  on  the  minds  of  the 
natives.  These  natives,  it  must  be  remembered,  were  fairly 
able  to  take  the  measure  of  their  instructors  and  put  a  value 
on  their  teaching. 

" '  The  profession  of  Christianity  had  been  much  hindered,' 
they  said,  '  by  persons  saying  that  the  world  will  be  burnt 
up — perhaps  very  soon,  and  they  will  all  be  destroyed. 
They  arc  frightened,  and  would  rather  not  hear  about  it, 
if  that  is  the  case.' 

■" '  Tell  them,'  I  said,  'that  I  am  come  to  speak  to  them  about 
their  Father  in  heaven,  who  loves  them,  who   does   them 
good  continually,  watches  over,  and  blesses  them.' 
^   Ten  Weeks,  &c.,  p.  45. 


56  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ir. 

"  What  do  they  think  of  the  Prayer  ?  [The  Lord's  prayer] 
Ngoza  'Hked  it,  the  first  time  he  heard  it.'  All  agreed 
that  the  thoughts  of  it  were  excellent.  '  They  thought  that 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  truth  in  what  the  missionaries 
said  ;  but  it  frightened  them  to  be  told  such  terrible  things. 
Some  said  the  world  would  be  drowned,  and  only  a  little 
bit  of  it  left  for  them  to  stand  on  ;  and  then  they  saw  the 
same  people  going  and  living  wickedly.'  '  They  have  under- 
stood more  to-night  than  they  ever  did  before.'  '  Now  tell 
them  whose  prayer  it  is — the  Lord's  prayer,  for  the  great 
God,  umkulunkulu,  sent  His  Son  to  become  a  man,  and 
He  lived  among  men,  and  loved  them,  and  taught  them 
about  the  love  of  their  Father  in  Heaven.'  '  Their  old 
women  had  stories  something  like  this.'  '  Say  now  that 
He  is  made  the  Inkos'  enkulu — Great  Lord — of  all  men. 
One  day  I  shall  hope  to  tell  them  more  about  him,  and 
how  He  showed  his  great  love  to  us  all  when  He  lived 
in  this  world  and  when  He  died.  But  now  He  is  living  in 
Heaven,  though  we  cannot  see  Him,  and  He  is  the  Lord  of 
us  all,  the  uKumbani,  Supreme  King,  whose  Kingdom 
ruleth  over  all  ;  and  we  must  obey  Him,  and  try  to  please 
Him  in  all  things.  It  is  His  Spirit  which  puts  every  good 
thought  into  our  hearts,  and  helps  us  to  do  every  right 
action.'  They  have  an  expressive  way,  I  find,  of  speaking 
of  a  man's  two  hearts. 

"  They  told  me  of  the  old  Kafir  tradition  that  '  umkulunkulu 
sent  the  word  of  life  by  a  chameleon,  and  then  he  sent  the 
word  of  death  by  a  lizard  ;  but  the  lizard  outran  the  chame- 
leon.' They  thought  that '  part  of  a  man  '  lived  after  death ; 
but  knew  nothing  about  judgment,  till  the  missionaries  told 
them.  '  Have  they  not  something  within  them,  which 
teaches  them  that,  when  a  man  has  done  wrong,  he  ought 
to  be  punished  } '  '  Yes  ;  a  man's  heart  condemns  him, 
when  he  has  done  wrong.'  '  It  is  reasonable,'  one  of  them 
observed,  *  since  umkulunkulu  made  us,  takes  care  of  us, 
has  given  us  laws,  and  we  must  all  stand  before  Him, 
that  we  should  expect  to  be  punished,  if  w^e  have  done 
wronsf.' 


1854.  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  57 


"  '  If  a  man  had  led  a  very  wicked  life,  and  was  grieved  because 
he  had  done  so,  what  was  he  to  do  ? ' 

"  '  To  an  earthly  chief,'  they  said,  '  he  would  confess  his  fault, 
and  ask  forgiveness.' 

"  }3efore  we  dismissed  our  company,  we  asked  them  if  they 
would  like  to  use  the  Lord's  Prayer  with  us,  as  we  were 
going  to  say  our  Evening  Prayers.  They  readily  assented  ; 
and  so  we  all  knelt  down  together,  and  I  repeated  it,  first 
in  English,  and  then  in  Kafir,  while  ]\Ir.  S.  repeated  it 
after  me,  and  the  men  joined  in  heartily.  How  strongl}^ 
one  felt,  that  this  was  indeed  a  Prayer,  given  us  by  One 
who  knew  well  what  was  in  man,  who  knew  what  words 
would  suit  the  wants,  and  express  the  heart's  desires,  of 
Jniman  beings  in  all  conditions  and  circumstances,  high  or 
low,  rich  or  poor,  educated  Englishman,  or  wild  barbarian 
Kafir !....!  lifted  up  my  heart  in  prayer  for  these 
poor  heathen.  May  God  grant  mc  grace  and  wisdom  to  do 
His  blessed  work  among  them."^ 

This  narrative  takes  us  back  at  once  to  the  older  story  of 
the  mission  of  Augustine  to  the  heathen  subjects  of  ^thelbert 
of  Kent.  But  it  is  hard  to  shut  our  eyes  to  the  great 
relative  superiority  of  the  Kafirs  in  spiritual  insight  to  the 
high-priest  of  Godmundingham,  whose  liberality  served  only 
as  a  decent  cloak  for  his  self-interest.  The  Kafir,  who  con- 
fessed that  he  deserved  and  ought  to  look  for  the  discipline 
of  a  righteous  Judge,  rose  to  a  far  higher  standard  than  that 
of  the  Northumbrian  Coifi  who  looked  on  his  own  religion  as 
of  no  virtue  whatever,  because,  had  it  been  of  any  worth,  the 
favours  of  the  gods  would  have  been  showered  down  lavishly 
on  himself,  their  most  devoted  worshipper,  whereas  the  portion 
which  had  fallen  to  his  lot  was  scant  indeed.  That  Gregory 
the  Great  really  desired  the  good  of  the  English  tribes  to 
whom  he  had  despatched  Augustine  and  his  companions  as 
teachers,  is  proved  by  the  sound  sense  which  marked  his 
■■    Ten  Weeks.,  <S;c.,  p.  loi. 


58  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 


advice  and  suggestions  to  the  first  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 
That  the  same  sound  sense  should  be  shown  in  the  Bishop's 
deaHngs  with  the  Kafirs,  is  only  what  we  might  expect. 
What  was  to  be  done  with  reference  to  their  religious 
celebrations  ?  Foremost  among  these  was  the  Feast  of  First 
Fruits. 

"  This,  as  now  observed,  is  a  purely  heathen  ceremony,  but 
has  undoubtedly  a  right  meaning  at  the  bottom  ;  and 
instead  of  setting  our  face  against  all  these  practices,  our 
wisdom  will  surely  be,  in  accordance  with  the  sage  advice 
of  Gregory  the  Great,  to  adopt  such  as  are  really  grounded 
on  truth,  and  restore  them  to  their  right  use,  or  rather  raise 
them  in  the  end  still  higher,  by  making  them  Christian 
celebrations.  This  Feast  of  First  Fruits  is  their  most  re- 
markable annual  festival,  and  it  is  a  royal  prerogative  to 
allow  of  its  being  kept.  Pakade,  therefore,  has  been  obliged 
to  send  messengers  to  Maritzburg  for  leave  to  celebrate  it. 
It  would  surely  be  a  step  in  the  right  direction,  if  we  could 
get  such  a  chief  as  this  to  allow  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  being 
said  by  a  Christian  missionary  before  the  Feast  begins, 
after  some  explanation  had  been  given  to  the  assembled 
multitude  of  the  general  meaning  of  such  an  address  to  the 
Supreme  Being ;  while  the  Chief  himself  and  his  counsellors 
(with  whom  a  longer  and  closer  conversation  might  be  held) 
might  be  told  the  special  meaning  of  each  particular  sen- 
tence of  the  prayer.  They  would  thus  be  taught  gradually 
to  connect  the  idea  of  thankfulness  and  reverence  to  Him 
who  is  the  giver  of  all  goodness,  with  their  duty  and  habit 
of  coming  together  to  celebrate  the  fresh  returns  of  His 
bounty.  And,  in  utter  despair  of  being  able,  for  many 
years  to  come,  to  reach  in  detail  the  immense  body  of 
natives,  who  now  inhabit  this  land,  so  as  to  supply  each 
particular  kraal  with  the  direct  and  constant  teaching  of  a 
Christian  missionary,  I  cannot  but  hope  that  even  in  this 
way  we  may,  with  the  blessing  of  God,  be  enabled  to  make 
some  breach  into  the  stronghold  of  their  heathenism, — 
more  especially  if,  as  I  think  may  be  practicable,  I  make  a 


1 854-  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  59 


point  of  going  the  circuit  annually  among  the  heathen,  and 
officiating  myself  at  this  Feast  of  First-fruits.  IVIr.  S. 
thinks  it  would  be  most  desirable,  for  civil  purposes,  that  a 
commissioner  should  be  present  at  the  ceremony,  and  give 
to  it  the  sanction  of  the  crown  of  England.  \\'ith  him  I 
might  make  my  visitation  of  the  heathen,  as  well  as  of  the 
scattered  Christians,  of  the  diocese."  ^ 

Something  was  thus  already  done  towards  showing  the 
people  that  white  men  and  black  men,  Englishmen  and 
Zulus,  were  all  children  of  one  common  Father  who  had  one 
Law,  and  one  Justice,  the  same  discipline  and  the  same 
love,  the  same  long-suffering,  and  the  same  blessed  purpose 
for  all.  This  was  the  vital  point  indeed,  and  the  Kafirs 
were  slow  to  be  convinced  of  the  Truth.  "  There  is  a  com- 
plete separation  in  these  matters,"  said  one  of  the  chiefs, 
"  between  the  black  and  the  white — we  cannot  at  all  under- 
stand each  other." 

"  Mr.  Shepstone  explained  that  I  thought  there  was  not  so 
great  a  separation  as  he  supposed,  that  we  believed  in 
unKulunKulu  (the  great-great  one)  as  well  as  they,  and  that 
I  was  sent  to  tell  them  more  about  Him,  what  He  had 
done,  and  what  He  was  doing  for  them."  - 

On  the  following  day  Mr.  Shepstone  asked  the  chief  I\akade 
what  he  thought  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  which  had  just  been 
recited  in  Kafir. 

"  He  said  we  quite  beat  him  last  night  with  talking  of  the 
umKulunKulu,  and  saying  that  we  prayed  to  Him  in 
England,  for  he  saw  that  there  was  not  so  great  a  separa- 
tion after  all.  We  were  perfectly  taken  by  surprise  with 
this  answer ;  for  we  had  fancied  that  he  had  scarcely 
noticed  this  observation  of  ours  overnight,  l^ut  it  seems 
he  had,  and,  though  he  had  said  nothing  at  the  time,  had 

^  Ten  Weeks,  &c.,  p.  94,  -  //'.  p.  115. 


6o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 

been  pondering  since  upon  it.  Mr.  Shepstone  then  explained 
to  him  the  Lord's  prayer,  and  said  that  Baba  Wetii  (our 
Father)  was  umKulunKulu,  and  then  went  through  the 
petitions,  one  by  one,  as  before.  The  chief  listened  appa- 
rently with  great  interest  to  all  that  was  said  to  him,  and 
seemed  to  realize  the  meaning  of  the  whole — the  first  fact 
having  been  the  key  to  unlock  the  rest.  In  answer  to  a 
question  from  Mr.  Shepstone,  he  said  it  would  be  a  very 
proper  prayer  to  be  used  at  their  festival,  in  which,  I  may 
rerhark,  nothing  whatever  met  the  eye  that  was  disgusting, 
or  in  any  way  offensive  to  a  Christian  mind,  except  the 
general  barbarism  of  the  people.  .  .  . 
"  But  as  soon  as  Mr.  Shepstone  ended  his  lecture,  the  chief  was 
off  again.     *  How  do  you  make  your  gunpowder  ?  '"^ 

It  was,  however,  quite  possible  that  the  name  chosen  to 
denote  the  Father  and  Preserver  of  all  men  might  convey 
wrong  impressions,  or,  it  may  be,  leave  no  impression  at  all. 
The  rule  followed  by  the  Bishop  was  to  adhere  to  the  name 
w^iich  seemed  to  express  their  highest  conceptions.  Visiting 
Mr.  Allison's  mission  station  at  Edendale,  a  few  miles  from 
Maritzburg,  he  learnt  that  his  people,  some  500  or  600  in 
number, 

"  were  unanimous  in  their  disapproval  of  the  word  for 
God  now  commonly  in  use  among  the  missionaries,  iiTixo, 
which,  they  said,  had  no  meaning  whatever  for  the  Kafirs. 
They  used  it  because  they  found  it  in  their  Bibles,  but  it 
was  not  a  word  of  their  language  at  all.  The  proper  word 
for  God,  they  said,  was  iTongo,  which  meant  with  them  a 
Power  of  Universal  Influence — a  Being  under  whom  all 
around  were  placed.  .  .  .  All  the  Kafir  tribes,  whether  on 
the  frontier  or  to  the  north,  would  understand  iTongo  ;  but 
the  latter  would  have  no  idea  whatever  of  what  was  meant 
by  21  Tiro,  though  the  former  are  now  used  to  it  through  the 
missionaries."  - 

*   Te)i  Weeks,  &c.,  p.  117.  -  lb.  p.  57. 


i854-  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  6i 

It  turned  out,  however,  that  Mr.  AlHson's  Kafirs  were 
in  error  as  to  the  universal  comprehension  of  the  name 
*'  iTongo." 

"  It  is  true  that  all  the  Kafirs  of  the  Natal  district  believe  in 
iTongo,  and  amaHlose  ;  and  it  is  very  likely  that  the  former 
may  be  regarded  as  having  the  universal  Tribal  influence 
they  spoke  of,  in  distinction  from  the  limited  family  influ- 
ence of  the  latter.  (It  did  not  occur  to  me  to  press  this 
inquiry.^)  But  these  words  are  certainly  used  by  them  only 
with  reference  to  the  spirits  of  the  dead,  not  to  the  great 
Being  whom  they  regard  as  their  Creator.  .  .  .  The  true 
words  for  the  Deity  in  the  Kafir  language — at  least  in  all 
this  part  of  Africa — are  itviKiilujiKiihi,  =  Almighty,  and 
tnnVelinquange,  literally  ' the  first  comer  out,'  =  the  First 
Essence,  or  rather  Existence.  It  will  be  seen,  as  my  narra- 
tive proceeds,  that  in  every  instance,  whether  in  the  heathen 
kraal,  amidst  the  wildest  of  savages,  or  in  the  presence  of 
the  teacher,  who  was  himself  surprised  at  the  result,  my 
enquiries  led  me  invariably  to  the  same  point,  namely,  that 
these  words  have  been  familiar  to  them  from  their  child- 
hood, as  names  for  Him  who  created  them  and  all  things, 
and  as  traces  of  a  religious  knowledge,  which,  however 
originally  derived,  their  ancestors  possessed  long  before  the 
arrival  of  missionaries,  and  have  handed  down  to  the  present 
generation.  The  amount  of  unnecessary  hindrance  to  the 
reception  of  the  Gospel,  which  must  be  caused  by  forcing 
upon  them  an  entirely  new  name  for  the  Supreme  Being, 
without  distinctly  connecting  it  with  their  own  two  names, 
will  be  obvious  to  any  thoughtful  mind.  It  must  make  a 
kind  of  chasm  between  their  old  life  and  the  new  one  to 
which  they  are  invited  ;  and  it  must  be  long  before  they  can 
become  able,  as  it  were,  to  bridge  over  the  gulf,  and  make 
out  for  themselves,  that  this  strange  name,  which  is  preached 
to  them,  is  only  the  white  man's  name  for  the  same  great 
Being,  of  whom  they  have  heard  their  fathers  and  mothers 

^  Later,  he  continued  the  inquiry  ;  the  result  being  that  the  translation 
now  is, ''  O  God,  my  (or  our)  God."     "  Nkulunkulu,  my  (or  our)  iTongo." 


62  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 

speak  in  their  childhood.^  .  .  .  Fully  confirming  this, 
Ngoza's  people  told  the  Bishop  that  amaTonga  and  Ama- 
Hlose  were  certainly  not  the  same  as  umKulunKulu,  for 
they  could  not  be  till  man  was  created  ;  in  short,  they  were 
departed  spirits,  but  umKulunKulu  made  all  things.  '  We've 
missed  the  truth  by  very  little  after  all,  for  we  pray  to 
unseen  spirits,  and  you  to  one  uiiseen  Being.' 
'''  Ala-Jilukaniszve  igmna-lako — Separated  {i.e.  hallowed)  he 
Thy  Name'  They  quite  understood  this  ;  they  never  used 
the  name  'umKulunKulu'  without  respect."- 

In  the  kraal  of  the  chief  Langalibalele,  whose  name  will 
become  prominent  in  the  history  of  the  Bishop's  later  years, 
Mr.  Shepstone  put  into  the  chiefs  hand  a  spoonful  of  brown 
sugar,  which  he  ate  with  great  zest.     The  latter  then  asked — 

"  '  How  is  sugar  made  .'' '  '  It's  made  by  boiling.'  '  Ah  !  then 
you  are  taught  that  by  the  Velinqange.'  It  should  be 
observed  that  we  had  not  said  a  word  to  him,  or  his  people, 
on  the  subject  of  religion  ;  so  that  here  we  had  the  heathen 
Kafir,  of  his  own  accord,  referring  the  wisdom,  which  he 
saw  we  possessed,  so  superior  to  his  own,  to  the  Great 
Source  of  all  Wisdom.  We  caught,  of  course,  at  this  word 
'  What  do  you  mean  by  umVelinqange .'' '  '  He  made 
men — he  made  the  mountains — he  gave  them  names.  Do 
you  know '  he  asked  '  who  gave  the  Tugela  its  name  .'' ' 
'  No.'  '  Then  it  must  be  the  Velinqange :  for  lue  do  not 
know  who  did.'  We  asked  "  WHio  was  the  umKulunKulu  '^.  ' 
He  said  '  He  was  the  same.'  '  Did  they  know  anything 
about  the  creation  .''  Had  they  any  tradition  about  it  ? ' 
'  No  ;  they  only  knew  that  He  had  made  them  ;  they  did 
not  know  hy  xvhat  zvord  He  had  made  them.  Their  old 
men  had  died  by  wars,  and  they  had  forgotten  everything.' 
He  said,  '  They  only  knew  of  uTixo  since  white  men  had 
come  into  the  country  ;  but  they  knew  the  other  names  from 
time  immemorial'  I  begged  Mr.  Shepstone  to  tell  him  that 
uTixo  was  meant  by  the  missionaries  for  the  same  Being, 

'    Ten  Weeks.,  &c.,  p.  60.  -  lb.  p.  99. 


1 854.  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  63 

but  the  teachers  did  not  know  they  had  such  good  names 
thcmseh^es  for  God, — that  we  prayed  to  umKulunKulu,  and 
I  was  sent  to  tell  them  all  about  Him,  the  things  which  they 
and  their  fathers  had  forgotten,  or  never  known.  Mr,  S. 
asked  if  the  feast  of  First-fruits  was  not  a  feast  of  Thanks- 
giving. '  Yes  ;  it  certainly  was,  but  they  did  not  know  to 
whom.'  At  a  particular  moon,  when  the  fruits  are  ripe,  the)- 
keep  a  feast  for  the  blessings  of  the  year  ;  but  they  do  not 
know  at  all  to  whom — they  have  quite  forgotten. 
"  Mr.  Blaine  had  not  been  wath  us  at  any  of  our  formei  con- 
ferences with  the  Kafirs,  and  wished  to  press  the  point 
further,  and  to  make  out  clearly,  whether  the}'  knew  any- 
thing of  their  own  two  names,  before  they  saw  the  face  of 
an  Englishman.  So  the  oldest  man  present  was  asked 
about  it,  and  he  replied  '  Yes  :  from  our  childhood  they  told 
us,  and  they  heard  it  from  their  fathers.'  '  Had  they  ever 
had  a  Missionar}'  in  their  tribe?'  'Yes,  Mr.  Allison  had 
been  with  them.  He  had  told  them  about  Jehovah,  and 
that  they  were  as  lost  sheep  without  a  shepherd.'  '  Had 
they  heard  the  two  names  before  then  .'' '  '  Yes,  long,  long 
before.'  'And  did  they  connect  the  names  with  Jehovah, 
when  they  heard  of  Him  .•' '  'No,  not  at  first  ;  they  only 
now  began  to  think  so.'  ....  A  discussion  now  arose 
between  themselves  as  to  whether  the  amaHlose  and 
amaTongo  were  the  same  as  umKulunKulu.  One  said  he 
thought  they  were.  But  he  was  over-ruled  by  the  others 
who  said  '  That  could  not  be,  for  tJiey  were  the  spirits  of 
dead  people,  who  came  into  snakes  sometimes ;  but 
umKulunKulu   made   men,  and  all   things.' "  ^ 

So  full  of  consideration  and  tenderness  were  the  dealings  of 
the  Bishop  with  the  heathen  of  his  diocese  in  matters  which 
are  generally  assigned  to  the  region  of  theology.  Not  less 
judicious  was  his  treatment  of  questions  arising  out  of  their 
social  conditions.  Among  the  foremost  of  these  was  pol}gam\'  , 
and  about  this  his  mind  was  soon  made  up. 

1    Ten  fr<r/-.f,  &c.,  p.  131. 


64  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 

"  I  must,  confess  that  I  feel  very  strongly  on  this  point,  that 
the  usual  practice  of  inforcing  the  separation  of  wives  from 
their  husbands,  upon  their  conversion  to  Christianity,  is 
quite  unwarrantable,  and  opposed  to  the  plain  teaching  of 
our  Lord.  It  is  putting  new  wine  into  old  bottles,  and 
placing  a  stumbling-block,  which  He  has  not  set,  directly  in 
the  way  of  their  receiving  the  Gospel.  Suppose  a  Kafir 
man,  advanced  in  years,  with  three  or  four  wives,  as  is 
common  amongst  them, — who  have  been  legally  married  to 
him  according  to  the  practice  of  their  land  (and  the  Kafir 
laws  are  very  strict  on  this  point,  and  Kafir  wives  perfectly 
chaste  and  virtuous),  have  lived  with  him  for  thirty  years  or 
more,  have  borne  him  children,  and  served  him  faithfully 
and  affectionately  (as,  undoubtedly,  many  of  these  poor 
creatures  do), — what  right  have  we  to  require  this  man  to 
cast  off  his  wives,  and  cause  them,  in  the  eyes  of  all  their 
people,  to  commit  adultery,  because  he  becomes  a  Christian  .-' 
What  is  to  become  of  their  children  .-'  Who  is  to  have  the 
care  of  them  .-*  And  what  is  the  use  of  our  reading  to  them 
the  Bible  stories  of  Abraham,  Israel,  and  David,  with  their 
many  wives }  I  have  hitherto  sought  in  vain  for  any 
decisive  Church  authority  on  the  subject.  Meanwhile,  it  is 
a  matter  of  instant  urgency  in  our  missions,  and  must  be 
decided  without  delay  in  one  way  or  other.  I  may  add 
that  I  returned  to  England  in  the  Indiana,  with  an  excellent 
old  Baptist  missionary  from  Burmah,  Dr.  Mason  ;  and  I 
was  rather  surprised  to  learn  from  him  that  the  whole  body 
of  American  missionaries  in  Burmah,  after  some  difference 
in  opinion,  in  which  he  himself  sided  decidedly  with  the 
advocates  of  the  separation  system,  have  in  the  early  part 
of  the  year  1853,  at  a  convocation,  where  two  delegates 
attended  from  America,  and  where  this  point  was  specially 
debated,  come  to  the  unanimous  decision  to  admit  in  future 
polygamists  of  old  standing  to  communion, — but  not  to 
offices  in  the  Church.  I  must  say,  this  appears  to  me  the 
only  right  and  reasonable  course.  In  the  next  generation, 
but  not  in  this,  we  may  expect  to  get  rid  of  the  evil  ;  for,  of 
course,  no  convert  would    be   allowed  to  become  a  poly- 


1 854.  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  65 


gamist    after  baptism,  or   to   increase  the  number  of  his 
wives."  1 

Writing  to  Mrs.  Colenso  some  two  years  later,  Mr.  Maurice 
said  on  this  subject : — 

"  That  the  Bishop  is  right  in  his  view  of  polygamy,  I  can  have 
Httle  doubt.  And  if  so,  it  must  be  a  great  and  useful 
duty  to  state  his  conviction.  It  brings  new  thought  and 
experience  to  bear  on  the  great  subject  of  family  life,  and 
the  moral  effect  of  every  courageous  and  well-considered 
announcement  of  difficulty,  and  a  purpose,  can  scarcely  be 
estimated." 

The  notion  that  Bishop  Colenso  ever  for  a  moment  regarded 
the  system  of  polygamy  as  such  with  the  faintest  favour  is  so 
utterly  and  monstrously  ludicrous  that  it  is  useless  to  waste 
words  upon  it.  The  system  was  in  his  eyes  simply  hateful  ; 
but  the  practice  of  polygamy  amongst  the  natives  with  whom 
he  had  to  deal  involved  a  problem  which  called  for  immediate 
solution.  There  were  two  ways  of  solving  it,  and  only  two. 
The  polygamist,  who  desired  to  profess  the  faith  of  Christ 
and  to  receive  baptism,  might  be  called  upon  to  put  away 
first  all  wiv^es  but  one  ;  or  he  might  be  told  that  he  might 
retain  the  wives  whom  he  had  already  married,  but  that 
he  must  not  add  to  their  number.  Natives  becoming  con- 
verts before  marriage  would,  of  course,  be  allowed  to  marry 
only  one  wife.  As  to  this  there  was  not,  and  there  never 
could  be,  any  question. 

The  former  of  these  two  courses  the  Bishop  saw  from  the 
first  was  "  unwarranted  by  the  Scriptures,  unsanctioned  by 
Apostolic  example  or  authority,  condemned  by  common 
reason  and  sense  of  right,  and  altogether  unjustifiable."  To 
make  known  this  conviction,  he  addressed,  in  1861,  a  letter  to 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  summing  up  the  arguments 

'   Ten  Weeks,  &c.,  p.  141. 
VOL.   I.  F 


66  .  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 

into  which  he  had  entered  at  greater  length  five  years  before 
in  a  letter  to  ,  an  American  missionary.  As  he  had  urged 
then,  so  still  he  felt  convinced,  that  the  practice  of  the  time 
when  he  wrote,  far  from  tending  to  that  extirpation  of 
polygamy  which  was  so  heartily  to  be  desired,  helped  to 
perpetuate  the  very  evil  objected  to.  According  to  the  rule 
then  commonly  inforced,  a  polygamist  wishing  for  baptism 
must  at  the  outset  break  up  his  household  and  send  adrift 
women,  one  or  more,  who  were  thus  placed  at  a  grievous 
disadvantage,  even  if  they  were  not  left  utterly  helpless^ 
This  necessity  placed  "  a  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of 
adults  of  the  present  generation,"  and  repelled  them  from  all 
close  contact  with  Christian  teaching.  As  a  necessary  con- 
sequence, the  children  also  were  kept  away  from  the  influence 
of  the  Christian  teacher,  and  they  too  became  polygamists 
in  their  turn,  and  handed  down  the  practice  to  their 
descendants. 

That  any,  who  have  thought  carefully  about  the  matter, 
should  dream  of  disputing  the  bishop's  conclusions,  seems 
altogether  amazing.  The  dismissed  wives  are  women  dis- 
graced for  life,  and  are  exposed  henceforth  in  the  kraal  to 
the  worst  temptations  of  savage  society  ;  and  this  is  the 
necessary  result  of  imposing  on  polygamists  before  baptism 
a  restriction  for  which  the  New  Testament  nowhere  furnishes 
any  authority.  But  for  such  considerations  as  these  Bp.  Gray 
seemed  to  have  riot  the  least  regard.  The  Journal  of  his 
Visitation  of  the  Diocese  of  Natal  in  1864  gives  some  account 
of  a  conversation  with  Mr.  Allison,  who  had  been  a  Wesleyan 
missionary,  and  was  then  an  Independent,  and  who  informed 
him 

''That  the  late  bishop  [so  he  was  pleased  to  speak  of  the 
Bishop  of  Natal]  had  done  infinite  mischief  to  the  Kafir 
mind  by  his  teaching.     He  said  that,  mainly  in  consequence 


1854.  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  67 

of  Dr.  Colenso's  views  on  the  subject  of  polygamy,  a  young 
chief  and  twenty-two  other  Christians  on  his  station  had 
become  polygamists  ;  and  he  added  that  he  thought  that 
those  views  had  been  disseminated  amongst  the  Kafirs  by 
WilHam  [the  Bishop's  interpreter]  and  others."  ^ 

Bishop  Gray's  charge  delivered  during  the  Visitation  to 
which  this  Journal  refers  is  full  of  grossly  reckless  assertions. 
For  the  excitement  caused  by  religious  alarm  in  a  superstitious 
mind  there  may  be  some  excuse.  For  the  manifest  falsehood 
of  the  sentences  just  recited  there  is  none.  It  is  impossible 
that  declarations  emphatically  condemning  polygamy  could 
be  twisted  into  sanctions  for  it.  Mr.  Allison's  words  (if  he 
really  spoke  them)  ascribe  to  the  Bishop  a  matured  approval 
of  polygamy,  as  such,  for  every  one,  and  represent  him  as  im- 
pressing this  approval  on  the  minds  of  his  Kafir  school-lads. 
The  libel,  if  it  really  comes  from  him,  reflects  supreme  dis- 
grace on  Mr.  Allison.  Does  it  reflect  much  less  on  Bp.  Gray 
for  repeating  it .-'  In  his  letter  to  the  American  missionary 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  speaks  of  the  practice  of  polygamy  as 
an  abomination.  The  same  term  must  be  applied  to  the  lie 
which  charges  him  with  upholding  it. 

Of  the  gratitude  as  well  as  of  the  honesty  of  the  Kafirs, 
the  Bishop  heard  many  stories,  the  evidence  for  which  seemed 
to  be  thoroughly  trustworthy. 

"  There  is,  I  hear,  an  old  Dutch  dame  at  Maritzburg,  who  has 
always  a  good  word  to  say  for  the  Kafirs.  In  early  times, 
before  the  Dutch  came  into  Natal,  her  husband  was  sent 
forward,  as  one  of  the  exploring  party,  to  examine  the  land. 
Near  the  bridge  of  Uys  Dooms  he  shot  some  elands  ;  and 
finding  there  the  headmen  of  a  party  of  Kafirs,  whose  cattle 
and  crops  had  all  been  ravaged  by  Dingaan's  armies,  and 
who  were  literally  starving,  he  told  them  where  the  animals 
lay,  and  bade  them  go  and  eat  them — which  they  did,  but 

^  Journal  oj  Visitation,  1864,  p.  24. 

F  2 


68  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 

very  economically,  making  them  last  a  long  time,  until  their 
wants  were  supplied  with  the  return  of  the  season.  In  fact 
they  were  saved  from  utter  misery  and  death  by  this  act  of 
kindness,  and  they  never  forgot  it.  But  when  the  Dutch 
emigrants  came  in  great  force  to  the  colony,  and,  not  being 
sufficiently  supplied  with  food  for  their  large  numbers,  were 
themselves  at  one  time  in  much  distress,  while  they  lived  in 
their  camp,  before  the  town  was  founded,  this  Kafir  head- 
man came  one  day  with  a  large  bowl  of  mealies,  and  in- 
quired for  the  Dutchman.  He  was  directed  to  his  tent,  but 
on  his  way  was  solicited  to  sell,  and  offered  large  payment 
for  his  mealies.  No !  he  must  find  his  old  friend,  the 
Dutchman,  and  so  he  did,  and  poured  out  the  mealies  at 
the  feet  of  his  wife,  refusing  to  receive  any  remuneration 
for  them.  Nor  was  this  all,  but,  every  two  or  three  days, 
he  came  back  again  with  a  similar  present,  and  continued 
it,  until  the  Dutch  too  were  able  to  get  over  their  difficulties, 
and  supply  the  wants  of  their  families."  ^ 

But  it  was  no  part  of  the  Bishop's  purpose  to  draw  a  rose- 
coloured  picture  of  the  native  tribes  in  Natal.  To  put  their 
better  qualities  out  of  sight  would  argue  something  worse 
than  a  lack  of  Christian  charity :  to  veil  the  darker  side  of 
their  character  would  be  practically  deception.  He  believed 
them  to  be  honest,  to  be  grateful,  and  on  the  whole  to  be 
guiltless  of  the  sin  of  drunkenness.  But  their  very  condition 
implied  that  they  were  not  trained  in  habits  of  steady  industry, 
that  they  were  not  a  people  who  could  be  said  to  seek  peace 
and  ensue  it,  and  that  they  were  certainly  not  on  the  high- 
road to  what  in  Europe  would  be  called  civilisation.  To  the 
moral  defects  of  the  European  immigrants  they  were  by  no 
means  blind.  Zulus  might  be  seen  in  the  streets  of  Maritz- 
burg  pointing  their  fingers  at  a  drunken  Englishman  staggering 
along  the  roadway  ;  but  it  did  not  follow,  unhappily,  that  they 
were  not  themselves  the  victims  of  worse  habits  of  a  more 


1   Ten  Weeks,  &c.,  p.  165, 


i 


1 854-  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  6^ 

secret  sort.  The  very  conditions  of  their  Hfe  invoh^ed  strong 
temptations  to  immorahty.  The  taint  of  this  uncleanness 
must  inevitably  contaminate  their  whole  society ;  and  the 
nature  of  the  moral  atmosphere  in  which  they  lived  would  be 
revealed  by  the  general  character  of  their  conversation  among 
themselves.  Staying  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Lindley  in  the 
magnificent  Inanda  country,  the  Bishop  found  that  there  was 
no  daily  school  for  the  little  ones  of  the  large  community 
dependent  upon  him. 

"  As  with  such  a  blooming  family  of  children,  some  grown 
almost  to  maturity,  and  who  had  already  learnt,  as  their 
excellent  father  told  me,  to  speak  the  native  tongue  with 
more  or  less  fluency,  for  it  was  impossible  to  prevent  this,  it 
seemed  so  natural  that  this  singular  gift  of  nature  should 
be  improved  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  salvation  of  the 
poor  dark  souls  around  them.  But  I  found  upon  inquiry 
that  there  were  serious  objections  to  allowing  a  free  inter- 
course between  the  white  and  the  black  children.  The 
conversation  of  the  latter  is  said  to  be  so  impure  and  dis- 
gusting that  a  Christian  parent  cannot  dare  to  commit  his 
children  to  its  contamination.  ,  .  .  Some  other  of  the 
American  missionaries,  I  find,  agree  in  this  principle  ;  others 
do  not,  especially  Mr.  A.  Grout,  whom  I  presently  after 
visited.  Doubtless,  there  must  be  need  for  great  watchful- 
ness and  care  in  such  a  matter  ;  but  I  cannot  help  believing 
that  some  measures  might  be  adopted  to  render  such  in- 
valuable help  as  the  teaching  of  young  persons  available 
for  our  natives.  We  should  never  choose  to  leave  our 
children  in  England  exposed  to  the  possible  evil  conse- 
quences of  teaching  in  a  ragged  school  ;  but  with  proper 
precaution  and  discipline,  surely  we  should  not  fear  to  see 
them  thus  cmj)loyed."  ^ 

Mr.  Lindley,  in  short,  entertained  no  sanguine  hopes  from 
the  results  of  missionary  efforts  among  the  nati\-c  tribes.     He 
1  Ten  Weeks,  Sec,  p.  236. 


^Q  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  u. 

thought  that  it  would  take  500  years  to  produce  any  sensible 
effect  upon  them.  Certainly  the  general  prevalence  of  im- 
purity— at  least,  in  language — among  young  children  implies 
coarseness,  and  worse  than  coarseness,  in  those  of  riper  years. 
But  the  Bishop  remarks  that 

"  there  were  eighty  souls  upon  the  station,  and  certainly  some 
of  these  gave  evident  outward  signs  of  very  considerable 
improvement.  Several  had  built  for  themselves  neat 
cottages,  as  good  as  those  of  many  an  English  settler."  ^ 

But  the  real  point  here  brought  before  us  for  examination  is 
the  character  of  Kafir  history  before  the  European  immigra- 
tion. Of  written  records  we  know  that  they  had  never  had 
any  ;  and  on  their  oral  traditions  they  seemed  themselves  to 
look  with  a  pitiable  uncertainty.  We  have  seen  them  con- 
fessing their  forgetfulness  of  things  which  in  their  belief  had 
been  known  to  their  fathers  ;  but,  although  in  this  they  may 
have  been  wrong,  it  must  still  remain  a  matter  of  doubt,  and 
therefore  a  fitting  subject  for  inquiry,  whether  their  course 
thus  far  had  been  upwards  or  downwards.  Mr.  Lindley 
seems  to  think  that  they  had  been  sinking  deeper  and  deeper 
into  the  abyss  of  barbarism,  and  he  suspected  that  this  deteri- 
oration extended  to  the  connotation  of  their  highest  terms. 
Admitting  that  "  they  had  the  name  umkulunkulu,  which  they 
used  to  express  the  '  creator  of  all  things,' "  he  yet  felt  sure 
that,  if  the  Bishop  asked  further,  he  would  "  find  they  meant 
by  it  a  little  worm  in  the  reeds,  a  sort  of  caddis-worm."  ^  It 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  same  fate  seems  to  have 
befallen  the  word  uTixo,  which  was  also  said  to  denote  a 
species  of  mantis,  called  the  "  Hottentot's  God."  ^  Regarding 
this  as  proof  rather  of  decay  than  of  growth,  Mr.  Lindley 
asked  them  :    "  If  you  had  been  told  about  umKulunKulu 

^  Ten  Weeks,  &c.,  p.  237.  2  /^_  p_  238. 

^  lb.  p.  57. 


i8s4-  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  71 

[instead  of  uTixo]  would  you  not  have  thought  directly  about 
the  little  worm  down  in  the  reeds  ?  " 

This  question  was  received  by  the  whole  party  with  a 
smile  of  respectful  derision.  "  O  no  !  we  only  call  it  so  ; 
we  use  the  same  name  for  it  ;  but  we  do  not  pay  any  honour 
to  it."  (One  remembers  a  flower,  called  by  the  name 
Everlasting.) 

The  Bishop  adds — 

"  I  felt  already  so  sure  of  the  ground  on  which  I  stood  that 
it  would  not  have  staggered  me  with  regard  to  my  general 
conclusion,  formed  from  so  many  replies,  obtained  from  so 
many  different  tribes,  if  I  had  found  that  those  now  before 
me  had,  previous  to  their  conversion,  been  sunk  in  yet  lower 
degradation,  and  had  lost  yet  more  of  the  truth  of  their 
original  traditions  than  others  of  their  brethren."  ^ 

The  Bishop's  efforts  were  not  confined  to  thoughts  and 
plans  for  the  welfare  of  the  natives  ;  but  for  the  English 
it  was  scarcely  possible  for  him  to  do  more  than  prepare  the 
way  for  the  systematic  work  to  be  taken  in  hand  on  his  return 
to  permanent  residence  in  the  diocese. 

"  I  had  decided  to  take  under  the  care  of  the  Church  a 
small  number  of  young  English  orphans,  of  whom  there 
were  several,  I  found,  in  the  colony,  in  circumstances  of 
great  distress.  Some  of  these  were  children  of  parents 
who  had  good  connexions  in  England,  but  had  emigrated 
to  Natal,  and,  having  been  removed  by  early  death,  had  left 
their  children  desolate  and  forsaken  on  that  far-off  shore. 
Others  had  lost  one  of  their  parents,  and  the  other  was 
unable,  left  with  a  large  family,  to  provide  for  the  whole  of 
her  little  ones.  And  it  seemed  most  desirable  to  open  at 
once  an  Orphan's  Home,  into  which  all  such  children  might 
be  received,  and  brought  up  in  the  bosom  of  the  Church, 

and  in   the   nurture  and  admonition  of  her  Lord I 

^   Ten  Weeks.,  &€.,  p.  239. 


72  LIFE  OF  BISHOP, COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 

felt  that  such  a  charity  would  be  of  the  greatest  importance 
to  our  mission  work,  not  merely  by  endearing  the  Church 
itself  in  the  eyes  of  the  people,  from  the  interest  she  took  in 
these  poor  lambs  of  Christ's  flock,  but  especially  by  enabling 
us,  as  we  may  hope,  out  of  these  young  orphans,  to  raise  a 
future  band  of  missionary  labourers.  "  ^ 

Wholly  free  from  any  spirit  of  exclusiveness,  he  was  ready 
to  work  in  harmony  with  all  who  had  at  heart  the  furtherance 
of  the  Divine  Kingdom.  He  had  many  opportunities  of 
observing  the  faithfulness  and  zeal  of  the  Wesleyan  ministers 
at  Maritzburg  and  Durban.  The  Roman  Catholic  bishop  in 
the  former  city  he  found 

"  a  very  gentlemanly  Frenchman,  with  a  benignant  expression 
of  countenance,  and  an  appearance  of  sincerity  and  earnest- 
ness about  him,  which  I  was  rejoiced  to  witness.  He  told 
me  that  there  were  not  yet  any  missionaries  of  his  Church 
among  the  natives  ;  but  he  was  about,  without  delay,  to  set 
some  at  work.  One  of  my  last  duties,  before  I  left  Durban, 
was  to  write  a  short  farewell  note  of  brotherly  love  to  him> 
as  I  had  not  been  able  to  call  and  take  my  leave  of  him  in 
Maritzburg. 

"  I  believe  that  I  can  thus  live  in  charity  with  my  brethren  in 
Christ,  who  are  striving  to  walk  religiously  before  God,  and 
to  bring  forth  fruit  to  their  common  Master,  although  I  may 
not,  and  certainly  do  not,  agree  with  them  on  all  points,  and 
some  of  them  important  points,  of  faith  and  doctrine ;  and 
that  without  compromising  in  the  least  my  own  Church 
principles.  I  believe  the  Roman  Catholic  is  in  error,  in 
holding  as  true,  and  mingling  with  the  essential  truth  as  it 
is  in  Christ  Jesus,  what  I  hold  to  be  the  fiction  of  men, 
unscriptural  and  untrue.  I  believe  the  Wesleyan  to  be  in 
error  because  (in  direct  opposition  to  the  wishes  and  com- 
mands of  his  founder)  he  has  separated  from  the  Church  of 
England,  and  taken  upon  himself  '  the  priesthood  also.'  I 
believe  the  Presbyterian  and  Independent  to  be  in  error, 

^  Ten  IVeeis,  &c.,  p.  205. 


iS54.  TEN  WEEKS  IN  NATAL.  73 

because,  as  it  seems  to  me,  they  set  at  naught  the  testimony 
of  all  history,  and  set  up  their  own  will,  on  the  judgement  of 
the  leaders  of  their  body,  against  the  example  and  direct 
injunction  of  our  Lord's  Apostles.  But,  while  I  have  every 
reason  to  believe  that  these  men  are  all  cleaving  to  one 
Blessed  Truth,  of  a  crucified  yet  glorified  Saviour,  of  a 
Father  who  sent  His  own  dear  Son  to  save  us,  and  a  Spirit, 
proceeding  from  the  Father  and  the  Son,  who  now  lightens 
our  eyes  and  teaches  our  hearts — while  I  have  reason  to 
believe  that  they  are  walking  daily  by  faith  in  the  Son  of 
God,  and  seeking,  by  prayer  and  communion  with  their 
Lord,  to  grow  in  holiness  and  love,  and  in  meetness  for  His 
Presence  in  heaven  —  I  feel  that  we  must  'receive  one 
another,  even  as  Jesus  Christ  has  received  us,  to  the  glory 
of  God,' — and  that,  as  we  hope  to  meet  together  hereafter 
as  fellow  servants  in  His  Kingdom  of  Glory,  so  we  may 
and  must  walk  together  in  brotherhood  and  love  by  the  way- 
side in  this  life,  and  commune  together  of  our  Master's  will, 
and  perchance  be  drawn  closer  to  one  another  even  here  in 
Him,  in  whom  we  are  one."  ^ 

With  these  hopes  and  these  convictions,  the  Bishop  on  his 
return  to  England  published  the  record  of  his  first  sojourn  in 
Katal,  unconscious  that  the  shortness  of  his  story  would,  after 
some  seven  years  more  of  steady  work  in  his  diocese,  be  ad- 
duced as  evidence  of  carelessness  and  haste,  and  his  remarks 
on  the  religious  and  moral  condition  of  the  native  tribes  be 
taken  as  proof  that  he  came  back,  as  he  went,  profoundly 
ignorant  of  the  first  principles  of  missionary  work,  and  in- 
capable, therefore,  of  bringing  any  part  of  his  task  as  a 
missionary  bishop  to  a  successful  issue.  Such  charges  are  not 
the  pleasantest  recompense  for  telling  the  truth.  Had  he 
begun  his  work  ten  )'ears  later,  they  would  have  taken  another 
shape.  Were  he  entering  upon  it  now,  they  would  probably 
not  be  brought  against  him  at  all. 

^  Ten  Weeks,  &c.,  p.  271. 


74  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ii. 

The  spirit  in  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal  entered  on  his  work 
reflects  that  of  Bishop  Selwyn  when  he  undertook  the  task 
of  ministering  to  Christians  and  heathens  in  New  Zealand. 
Both  found  in  "  Christian  work  the  best  interpreter  of  Christian 
doctrine,"  and  the  convictions  which  Dr.  Selwyn  expressed  in 
the  sermon  which  he  published  under  this  title  exercised  even 
a  stronger  power  over  Dr.  Colenso.  The  former  insists  that 
the  test  of  necessary  doctrine  can  be  found  only  in  the  region 
of  practical  duty. 

"  What  is  really  necessary  to  reform  the  sinner,  to  comfort  the 
sorrowful,  and  to  guide  the  dying  on  the  way  to  heaven, . 
that,  and  that  only,  is  the  doctrine  which  God  calls  upon 
every  man  to  receive.  Thus,  for  instance,  in  our  mission 
work,  our  standard  of  necessary  doctrine  is,  what  we  can 
translate  into  our  native  language  and  explain  to  our  native 
converts.  This  we  know  to  be  all  that  is  really  necessary 
to  their  salvation.  .  ,  .  There  may  be  a  higher  heaven  to 
which  some  chosen  servants  of  God  may  be  raised  ;  there 
may  be  unutterable  words  which  only  they  can  hear,  visions 
of  glory  may  be  opened  to  the  view  of  some,  which  are 
denied  to  others  :  but  the  range  of  necessary  doctrine  we 
believe  to  be  that  which  is  attainable  by  all,  because  the 
promise  is  to  the  wayfaring  man,  and  to  the  simple,  to  the 
poor,  and  to  the  blind." 


CHAPTER   III. 

EARLY   WORK   IN    NATAL. 

On  the  20th  of  May,  1855,  the  Bishop  with  his  family  landed 
in  Natal.  From  this  moment,  says  Dr.  Kuenen,  the  friend 
of  his  later  years,  he  "  entered  on  a  period  of  intense  and 
exhausting  labours  ;  "  ^  and  no  one  is  better  qualified  than  Dr. 
Kuenen  to  pronounce  judgement  on  the  work  of  a  missionary 
who  really  grasps  the  nature  of  his  task.  All  men  have  not 
the  same  gifts  ;  and  it  is  in  no  invidious  spirit  that  a  contrast 
has  been  drawn  between  the  method  adopted  by  Bishop 
Colenso  and  that  of  Bishop  Gray.  The  latter  never  so  much 
as  attempted  that  which  the  former  with  indomitable  per- 
severance achieved.  It  is  no  shame  to  him  that  he  did  not 
attempt  it.  His  life  might  have  been  less  useful  than  it  was 
had  he  done  so.  But  when  Dr.  Gray  some  eight  years  later 
spoke  of  the  Natal  Diocese  as  having  been  brought,  by  the 
colleague  whom  he  once  professed  to  love,  into  a  state  of 
spiritual  ruin,  he  was  using  language  which  betrayed  not  only 
extreme  narrowness  of  view  but,  as  we  shall  see,  a  very 
lamentable  ingratitude.- 

In  his  Ten  Weeks  in  Natal  the  Bishop  has  described  the 
general  features  of  the  country  included  within  the  borders 

1  De  Onderzoeker,  June  27,  1884. 

2  Journal  of  a  Visitation  of  the  Diocese  of  Natal  in  1864,  pp.  i,  4,  7? 
18,  20,  24. 


76  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

of  his  large  diocese,  and,  more  particularly,  of  the  district 
round  the  capital  city  of  Pietermaritzburg.  About  five  miles 
from  this  city  lies  the  ground  which  was  to  furnish  him  a 
home  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Here,  in  the  house  known  as 
Bishopstowe,  or  as  the  natives  call  it  Ekukanyeni,^  the  home 
of  light,  he  gave  his  mind  to  all  the  duties  which  pressed  on 
him  as  the  chief  pastor  of  his  fellow-countrymen  and  also  as  a 
missionary  bishop.  Here  also  in  later  years  he  was  compelled 
to  add  to  these  cares  the  toil  and  anxiety  of  the  political 
struggle  to  which  he  felt  called  in  the  sacred  cause  of  truth,      I 

Ascending  the  hill  along  which  the  road  winds  from  Maritz- 
burg,  the  visitor,  on  reaching  the  spot  where  the  white  cross 
on  the  roof  of  the  Mission  Chapel  became  visible,  sees  before 
him  a  scene  of  great  beauty.  Before  him  rises,  at  a  distance 
of  eight  or  ten  miles,  the  massive  Table  Mountain,  one  of  the 
differences  between  this  mountain  and  its  namesake  of  Cape 
Town  being  that  its  sides  are  clothed  with  vegetation  more 
or  less  dense  to  within  a  few  yards  of  its  summit,  where  the 
red  rock  begins  to  show  itself  A  path  towards  the  north  end 
leads  to  the  top,  which  is,  in  fact,  a  farm  of  five  or  six  thousand 
acres,  well  watered  and  abounding  in  game.  The  difficulty  of 
the  ascent  and  the  ease  with  which  such  a  position  could  be 
maintained  pointed  it  out,  at  times  when  such  a  danger  was 
regarded  as  not  an  impossibility,  as  a  place  of  refuge  for  the 
whole  white  population  in  Natal  in  the  event  of  an  outbreak 
of  the  natives. 

His  daughter  describes  Bishopstowe  as  standing 

"  upon  a  long  sweep  of  hill,  surmounted  by  other  lower 
rises  on  each  side,  but  overtopped  to  the  north  at  right 
angles  by  a  higher  range  into  which  one  end  of  its  own 

^  It  seems  likely  that  this  name  was  originally  suggested  by  the 
Bishop;  but  the  naming  of  the  little  native  village,  which  grew  up  under 
its  wing,  Esibaneni,  the  place  of  the  torch,  i.e.  kindled  at  the  light,  was 
entirely  their  own. 


1 


i855-  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  77 


ascends.  Upwards  to  the  north,  downwards  to  the  east 
and  west,  swept  wide  plantations  of  trees,  grown  by  our- 
selves, those  to  the  west  bounded  by  a  sluggish  stream, 
white  with  lilies  every  autumn,  across  which  a  long  low 
bridge  with  heavy  weeping  willows  led  to  the  steep  and 
winding  drive,  bordered  on  either  side  by  choice  and  foreign 
shrubs,  which  brought  the  traveller  at  length  to  my  father's 
ever  open  doors."  ^ 

The  Natal  Table  Mountain  is  really  triangular. 

"  One  only  of  the  three  sides,"  Mrs.  Colenso  tells  us,  "  faces 
Bishopstowe,  like  a  majestic  altar,  and  always  peaceful  and 
benignant,  from  its  early  morning  aspect  of  soft  deep  ultra- 
marine shadows  wreathed  with  white  mists,  to  the  evening 
glory  of  the  opposite  sunset  in  which  it  shines  iridescent, 
the  crown  of  red  rocks  round  its  brow  showing  opaline,  as 
if  from  within.  The  Bishop  loved  it  from  first  to  last,  not 
that  he  talked  about  it, — but  he  would  not  be  without  it. 
His  study  was  without  a  fire-place,  but  he  could  never  be 
persuaded  to  change  it  for  an  equally  convenient  and  quieter 
room,  because  there  he  '  could  not  see  the  mountain  ' :  and 
the  same  reason  met  us  when  we  wanted  to  put  his  writing- 
table  in  what  we  thought  a  better  light.  It  was  over  the 
mountain  that  he  watched  the  great  comet  stretch  all  across 
the  sky  in  1882." 

This  old  home,  rendered  so  dear  by  all  the  associations  of 
his  life,  is  gone.  Barely  fifteen  months  after  he  had  been 
taken  from  his  earthly  toil,  the  house, — with  all  its  contents, 
his  instruments,  his  books,  his  papers, — was  swept  away  by 
a  terrible  fire  which  defied  all  the  precautions  taken  in  Natal 
against  such  accidents.  An  intensely  hot  wind  was  blowing 
from  the  north-west,  when,  about  three  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon (September  3,   1884),  a  little  herd-boy  came  breathless 

Ruin  of  ZtiliilatiL,  vol.  ii.  p.  x. 


78  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

to  report  a  great  fire  leaping  over  the  shoulder  of  the  range 
immediately  above  Bishopstowe. 

"  In  ten  minutes'  time  the  flames,  carried  before  the  violent 
gale,  flew  down  the  long  slope,  leaping  across  the  wide 
burnt  belt  which  surrounded  us  on  every  side,  tearing 
through  the  undergrowth  of  the  long  plantations,  and 
throwing  themselves  with  fury  upon  the  house.  '  A  regi- 
ment of  soldiers  could  have  done  nothing,'  said  afterwards 
an  intelligent  English  farmer  present  at  the  scene.  The 
buildings,  composed  to  a  great  extent  of  wood  and  thatch, 
were  tossed  up  in  flame  like  a  child's  cardboard  house,  and 
the  dense  driving  masses  of  smoke  prevented  any  chance 
of  saving  aught  from  destruction  except  the  lives  of  the 
inmates  and  a  few  cherished  articles  snatched  from  the 
study  :  our  lives  were  spared,  but  little  else.  Less  than  one 
hour  sufficed  for  all,  and,  when  that  had  passed,  the  gale  of 
wind,  which  had  been  the  cause  of  the  mischief,  dropped 
suddenly,  and  a  calm  and  lovely  evening  fell  upon  the 
blasted  scene."  ^ 

Of  the  site  of  the  house  thus  destroyed,  and  of  the  growth 
■of  the  house  itself,  Mrs.  Colenso  writes  : — 

^'  When  the  Bishop  first  saw  the  place,  it  was  one  of  many 
grassy  slopes,  with  a  small  solitary  flat-topped  mimosa- 
tree  upon  it,  lying  before  Table  Mountain.  In  the  frontis- 
piece to  Ten  Weeks  the  cattle  mark  the  future  site. 
And  Bishopstowe  was  not  built  in  a  day,  but  grew. 
First,  while  the  Bishop  returned  to  England,  the  mission 
party  put  up  a  four-roomed  cottage  facing  the  Mountain,  with 
a  row  of  small  rooms  behind  it ;  into  which,  after  about  a 
twelvemonth's  stay  in  Pietermaritzburg,  the  Bishop's  family 
(now  numbering  two  little  sons  and  three  daughters,  the 
youngest  of  whom  was  born  four  months  after  the  arrival  in 
Natal),  with  numerous  members  of  the  mission  party,  were 
at  first  crowded.  Not  half  a  mile  off  down  the  slope  to  the 
south,  another  cottage  gave  accommodation  to  others  of  the 
^  Miss  F.  E.  Colenso,  Ruin  of  Zululand,  vol.  ii.  p.  xi. 


1 855-  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  79 

party,  while  a  blacksmith's  forge,  carpenter's  shop,  and  farm- 
ing operations  generally  furnished  plenty  of  work,  the  one 
thing  without  which  the  Bishop  never  could  believe  that  any 
one  could  be  happy.  Those  round  him  were  not  always  of 
his  mind  on  this  point,  as,  for  example,  on  one  occasion  when 
he  had  to  take  off  his  coat  and  lay  some  courses  of  bricks  him- 
self, to  prove  by  demonstration  that  the  occupation  was  not 
degrading  for  a  catechist !  Most  of  the  bricks  used  in  build- 
ing were  made  and  burnt  on  the  place.  Some  of  the  early 
tree-planting,  too,  was  done  with  his  own  hands,  at  the  head 
of  the  school-boys.  Foundations  were  laid  for  the  main 
building — an  extension  of  the  original  cottage  front,  but 
raised  and  lightened  by  white  wooden  gables  over  tall 
windows — and  for  a  second  wing,  the  building  thus  forming 
three  sides  of  a  square.  But,  to  begin  with,  there  was  raised, 
a  few  yards  to  the  right  of  these  foundations,  a  little  hexa- 
gonal 'tabernacle'  or  summer-house  of  lath  and  plaster, 
lined  with  rough  bookshelves,  with  just  room  in  the  midst  for 
a  table,  two  chairs,  and  an  interpreter,  and  here  through  the 
blazing  summer  day  the  Bishop  worked  as  described  by 
Professor  Kuenen  :  for  many  months  were  spent  in  building 
the  chapel,  which  was  to  serve  also  as  school-room  and 
sleeping-room  for  the  native  boys.  It  was  constructed  of 
native  'yellow-wood,'  which  endures  almost  all  weathers, 
the  buttresses  and  gables  being  painted  white.  The  next 
task  was  to  provide  a  printing-office,  and  better  sleeping- 
rooms  for  teachers  and  taught,  before  the  study  facing  the 
Mountain  was  completed  in  the  main  building :  while  the 
large  companion  room,  meant  for  a  drawing-room,  was  not 
used  as  such  until  after  the  return  from  England  in  1865, 
being  found  convenient  for  classes  of  men,  for  whose 
instruction  the  Bishop  would  occasionally  be  called  in  from 
next  door. 
"Both  house  and  chapel  were  thatched,  the  long  thatching 
grass  {tambootie)  and  the  finer  kind  {iivicele)  growing 
luxuriantly  around,  a  convenience  in  one  respect,  but  a 
source  of  danger  in  another.  Alarms  and  accidents  from 
grass  fires  were  not  wanting  in  those  days.     Half  of  the 


8o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 


farm-buildings  were  once  burnt  down.  At  a  later  terrible 
time,  when  the  very  climbing  plants  on  the  verandah  were 
scorched,  and  the  window-panes  hot  to  the  touch,  the 
Bishop  came  up  pale  and  lame  from  a  critical  corner, 
where,  as  he  told  us,  he  had  found  himself  quite  cut  off  by 
the  fire,  and  suffocated  by  the  thick  smoke  :  he  was  choking, 
and  had  just  time  to  think  *  I  shall  never  write  my  book  on 
the  Pentateuch  ! '  when — may  we  not  say  i* — as  if  in  reply,  a 
breath  of  wind  parted  the  smoke  for  a  moment,  and  showed 
him  an  already  burnt,  safe  patch  beyond,  which  he  reached 
with  a  struggle  and  a  wrench  to  his  ankle." 

Thirty  years  have  now  passed  since  nineteen  young  Kafir 
children  were  brought  to  the  new  home  in  this  smiling  land- 
scape by  the  Indunas  Ngoza  and  Zatshuke,  who  placed  them 
in  the  hands  of  the  Bishop  for  education.  On  their  part  it 
was  an  act  at  once  of  great  trust  and  of  great  boldness.  They 
had  to  run  counter  to  every  prejudice  of  their  countrymen, 
who  were  afraid  that  the  children  might  be  carried  off  to 
England  or  compelled  by  main  force  to  become  Christians. 
The  two  brave  chiefs  did  not  share  this  alarm.  "  Do  what 
you  like  with  them,"  they  said  to  the  Bishop,  "  teach  them 
what  you  will,  train  them  as  you  like  ;  send  them  to  England 
if  you  will,  though  we  hope  you  will  not."  Their  people  had 
done  what  they  could  to  shake  their  purpose  ;  but  Ngoza's 
reply  was  that  he  should  like  to  be  the  last  fool  of  his  race. 
Of  the  fortunes  of  the  school  thus  set  up  the  Bishop's  letters 
will  furnish  some  account.  Almost  immediately  after  it  was 
opened,  Ngoza  fell  sick.  He  attributed  his  disease  to  the 
hatred  which  his  surrender  of  the  children  had  brought  upon 
him  ;  but  later  on  he  had  his  reward,  when,  along  with  many 
refugee  Zulu  chiefs,  he  saw  the  change  for  the  better  already 
effected  in  them. 

"  We  shall  have  no  more  trouble  now,"  he  said,  "  the  people 
have  not  a  word  to  say.     When  I  speak  to  them  about  the 


1855-62.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  81 


children,   they  are  silenced.     They   no   longer   call    me   a 
madman,  as  they  did  at  first." 

The  children  had,  indeed,  fallen  into  good  hands  ;  and  the 
work  thus  begun  in  the  earnest  faith  of  the  parents  was  not 
marred  by  any  extravagant  haste  to  indoctrinate  the  children 
with  what  are  called  propositions  of  dogmatic  theology.^ 

In  the  interval  which  passed  before  his  next  visit  to 
England,  the  Bishop  had  gone  through  an  amount  of  work 
which,  as  Dean  Stanley  told  the  members  of  the  S.P.G.  many 
years  later,  would  keep  alive  his  fame  as  a  missionary  long 
after  his  persecutors  were  all  dead  and  buried.  Reviewing  the 
Bishop's  career  shortly  after  his  death.  Dr.  Kuenen  says  : — 

"If  we  bear  in  mind  that  when  he  arrived  in  Natal  he  had 
first  to  learn  the  Zulu  language,  we  are  astounded  at  what 
he  effected  in  the  course  of  seven  years.  The  list  of 
books  written,  and  for  the  most  part  printed  under  his 
directions  by  the  natives,  is  before  me.  It  contains  a 
grammar  of  the  Zulu  language,  and  a  summary  of  it  for 
beginners  ;  a  Zulu-English  dictionary  of  552  pages  ; 
selections  and  reading-books  in  the  Zulu  language  ; 
manuals  of  instruction  for  the  natives  in  the  English 
language,  in  geography,  history,  astronomy,  &c.  ;  the  trans- 
lation of  the  books  of  Genesis,  Exodus,  Samuel,  and  of  the 
entire  New  Testament,  into  the  Zulu  language. 

"  The  labour  itself  is  not  less  worthy  of  our  admiration 
than  the  motive  with  which  it  was  undertaken,  and  the 
spirit  in  which  it  was  completed.  While  from  the  outset 
he  felt  himself  drawn  towards  the  Zulus,  he  now  no  longer 
needed  to  work  under  restraint,  and  he  freely  mani- 
fested the  love  which  he  bore  them.  They  responded  to  it 
by  childlike  trust  and  warm  affection.  This  excellent 
mutual  attachment  between  the  pupils  and  the  teacher  con- 
tributed not  a  little  to  the  success  of  his  work, — specially 

'  See  the  account  of  Ekukanycni  in  the  Natal  Journal^  for  April,  1S57. 
VOL.    I.  G 


82  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

of  his  translations  of  the  Bible  into  their  language.  It  was 
accomplished  by  continual  consultation  with  the  natives,  so 
that  there  could  be  no  fear  that  they  would  receive  a  wrong 
impression — as  is  so  often  the  case — in  regard  to  the  Bible 
through  errors  of  translation.  In  printing  his  books  he 
also  had  the  help  of  natives,  some  of  whom  had  advanced 
far  in  their  knowledge  of  English  and  in  civilisation.  My 
enumeration  of  the  titles  of  his  books  has  shown  that  the  ^ 
instruction  in  the  mission  schools  was  not  limited  to 
doctrinal  matters,  but  embraced  the  first  principles  of 
European  science." 

In  short,  the  Bishop  set  to  work  genuinely  in  the  spirit  and 
with  the  aims  of  Alfred  the  Great  when  he  undertook  to 
instruct  the  English  people  in  days  in  which  they  knew 
nothing  of  science,  nothing  of  philosophy,  nothing  of  history. 
Rapid  progress  could  scarcely  be  looked  for  ;  but  the  good 
work  was  not  allowed  to  flag.  With  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
all  this  went  for  nothing.  Seven  years,  to  the  day,  had  passed 
from  Dr.  Colenso's  coming  to  Natal  in  1855  to  his  embarking 
again  for  England  on  May  20,  1862.  Before  he  could  return. 
Dr.  Gray  had  "  visited  "  the  Natal  Diocese,  and  pronounced 
the  Bishop's  work  a  complete  failure. 

"  There  came,"  he  says,  "  a  falling  away.  The  subtle  poison 
of  unbelief  entered  in  ;  the  mind  was  turned  away  from 
the  practical  work  which  lay  before  it,  and  given  to  the 
working  out  of  sceptical  theories.  Confidence  was  shaken. 
Works  begun  well  were  abandoned.  Progress  there  was 
none.     Instead  thereof  there  has  been  declension." 

Well  might  the  Bishop  of  Natal  say  that  these  statements 
involved  a  most  unjust  and  cruel  suppression  of  the  truth.  Of 
the  amount  and  quality  of  the  work  needed  in  laying  the  very 
foundations  of  native  education  and  training  Bishop  Gray 
had  no  practical  experience  whatever.  He  had  made  no 
attempt  to  master  any  native  dialect  in  his  original  undivided 


1855-62.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  83 

diocese  ;  nor  had  he  done  anything  pei'sonally  to  acquire  the 
language  of  tribes  in  his  diocese  as  subsequently  reduced 
in  size.  With  his  unfailing  candour  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
adds  : — 

"  Very  far  indeed  am  I  from  blaming  him  for  this  omission  ; 
he  too  has  had  intense,  infinite  labour  ;  but  it  has  been 
labour  of  another  kind,  in  building  up  the  Church  chiefly 
among  a  civilised  European  population.  And  hence  the 
injustice  of  his  remarks  upon  myself." 

But  this  malignant  imputation  of  unbelief  was  followed  not 
unnaturally  by  misrepresentation  and  slander  of  other  kinds. 
Writers  in  the  Guardian  newspaper  for  instance  charged  him 
with  corrupting  the  Scriptures  in  his  translations  ;  and  he 
contented  himself  with  pointing  out  the  absurdity  of  supposing 
that  he  could  even  attempt  such  a  folly,  which  any  missionary 
of  any  Church  might  detect. 

"  I  am  far  indeed,"  he  says,  "  from  supposing  that  my  versions 
are  perfect.  I  may  have  missed  the  meaning  of  the 
original  in  some  places,  and  failed  to  express  it  satisfac- 
torily in  Zulu  in  others But  I  challenge  any  one  to 

point  out  a  single  passage  wherein  I  have  dishonestly 
departed  from  the  meaning  of  the  text  of  Scripture, — not 
certainly  as  it  exists  in  the  English  Version,  but  in  the 
Hebrew  and  Greek  originals,  as  interpreted  by  the  most 
able  commentators."  ^      * 

In  a  certain  sense  it  might  be  said  that  the  Bishop's  trans- 
lations into  Zulu  were  made  by  Zulus  themselves.  Taking 
the  Greek  Testament,  for  instance,  he  would  first  represent  in 
Zulu  as  accurately  as  he  could  the  meaning  of  a  clause  in  the 
original,  and  would  then  ask  the  native  to  repeat  the  same 
in  his  own  phraseology.     Being  trained  gradually  to  under- 

^  Remarks  oti  the  Recent  Proceedings  and  Charge  of  the  Bishop  of 
Capetown,  1864,  p.  47. 

G  2 


84  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

stand  the  Bishop's  purpose,  the  native  would  introduce  those 
nicer  idioms  which  must  distinguish  the  work  of  a  native 
from  that  of  a  European.  No  philologist  could  devise  a  surer 
process  ;  but  it  must  be  slow.  In  difficult  passages  much 
time  might  be  spent  in  expressing  perfectly  a  single  verse. 
Those  who  have  gone  through  such  labours  will  know  what  it 
is  ;  but  it  was  not  appreciated  by  Bishop  Gray. 

In  the  printing  of  the  eighteen  books  prepared  by  the 
Bishop  for  the  use  of  missionary  students  and  native  scholars, 
great  part  of  the  work  was  done  by  a  Zulu  lad,  one  of  the 
nineteen  first  brought  to  him  by  the  Indunas  Ngoza  and 
Zatshuke  for  education  during  a  period  of  five  years  only. 
During  this  time,  with  the  drawbacks  and  disappointments 
which  must  be  experienced  in  the  management  of  any  school, 
these  children  got  on  well, — it  may  be  said,  excellently  well. 
Some  of  them  were  taught  the  business  of  the  printer  and 
binder,  others  made  some  little  progress  in  other  manual 
arts  ;  but  at  the  end  of  the  five  years  their  mothers,  brothers, 
and  sisters  worried  their  fathers  to  reclaim  them.  The  lads 
themselves,  not  unlike  English  children,  were  eager  to  be 
freed  from  the  thraldom  of  school ;  and  the  apparent  necessity 
for  letting  them  go  arose  shortly  before  the  Bishop's  return  to 
England.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Bishop  left 
his  diocese  for  a  time,  not,  as  his  opponents  hinted  or  main- 
tained, only  because  he  wished  to  publish  a  book  which  would 
destroy  the  foundations  of  all  religion,  but  because  it  was 
indispensably  needful  to  raise  supplies  of  money  and  men 
for  extending  the  mission  work.  Under  the  circumstances 
no  alternative  was  left.  Most  of  the  children  returned  for  the 
present  to  their  homes  ;  but  his  printing  press  was  still  man- 
aged by  one  of  these  youths,  who  continued  steadily  at  his 
labour  during  the  Bishop's  absence,  without  any  supervision, 
correcting  the  sheets  himself  with  the  greatest  accuracy,  and 
sending  the  proofs  regularly  each  month  to  England. 


1 863.  EARL  Y  WORK  IN  NA  TAL.  85 

In  truth  a  deep  impression  had  been  made  on  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  many,  and  even  at  the  cost  of  anticipating  the 
narrative  of  a  later  time  it  is  well  to  note  here  what  that 
impression  was,  and  to  see  how  it  gives  the  lie  to  the  false 
pictures  of  Dr.  Gray.  To  these  poor  lads  the  Bishop  was 
emphatically  Sobantu,  the  "  father  of  the  people,"  or,  as  they 
also  sometimes  called  him,  Sokululeka,  "  father  of  raising  up." 
In  his  honesty  of  purpose,  in  the  earnestness  of  his  faith,  in 
the  sincerity  of  his  love,  they  had  implicit  confidence.  Their 
trust  was  to  be  rudely  tested,  not  by  temptations  arising  from 
the  evil  companionship  of  their  countrymen,  but  by  denuncia- 
tions of  their  friend  by  Christian  slanderers  and  traducers. 
The  following  extracts  from  letters  written  to  Bishop  Colenso 
by  these  youths  speak  for  themselves.  They  are  given  as 
they  were  written,  in  English,  even  the  spelling  not  being 
altered. 

"June  29,  1863. 
"  My  dear  Lord, 

"  I  have  no  time  now  to  write  all  what  I  wish  to  say  to  you, 
but  I  am  very  glad  to  see  you  writing,  for  I  like  very  much 
to  write  every  word  in  English  tongue,  but  I  can't  do  that, 
for  I  know  not  all  the  sorts  of  English  word. 

"  At  this  time  I  am  very  glad  to  my  work.  I  have  only 
Fani  who  help  me  in  the  place  of  ManKentyane  and 
Lingane.  When  ManKentyane  was  just  come  here,  he  was 
with  us  only  one  month  and  a  half,  when  he  hears  that  the 
sickness  of  small  pox  will  be  at  Natal.  He  gone  away,  he 
left  Fani  in  his  place,  but  I  hope  that  Lingane  will  come 

to  me,  if  Fani  go  home But,  my  Lord,  the  thing 

which  I  want  to  know  about  it,  is  this  that  I  want  to  know 
that,  if  I  done  all  the  copies  of  the  book  of  New  Testament, 
what  shall  I  do  ?  I  say  that  for  I  don't  like  to  go  away  to 
somebody,  I  don't  like  to  leave  Ekukanyeni.  I  say  that 
for  I  see  now  I  will  done  them  at  April  or  May  1864,  I 
don't  know  yet,  only  thinking." 


86  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

"August  23,  1863. 

"  My  dear  Lord, 

"  I  am  very  glad  this  day  that  you  send  me  this  letter,  my 
heart  is  so  fully  rejoice  to  see  it.  At  this  time  I  know 
that  you  will  come  back  to  us  again,  for  if  I  take  this  your 
letter  and  look  at  it,  I  see  this  to  be  sure  that  you  wish  for 

yourself  to  come  again  to  Natal I  have  heard  that 

Ngoza  want  to  bring  here  his  boys." 

The    following  is    a    literal    translation    from    the   original 
Zulu  : — 

''May  29,  1864. 

"  My  Lord, 

"  I  rejoiced  greatly  to  hear  your  letter  which  you  sent  to 
William.  I  wish  m.uch  that  you  would  write  to  me  also, 
that  I  may  hear  clearly,  whether  the  people  are  speaking 
the  truth,  or  no,  about  you.  The  other  day,  May  10,  there 
came  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  along  with  Mr.  Robertson  : 
they  reached  Ekukanyeni  both  together.  And  so  Mr. 
Robertson  called  William,  saying  he  wished  to  see  him. 
They  came  in  both  together  into  the  printing-office,  and 
looked  at  my  work.  Afterwards  we  went  out  together 
with  them  in  the  afternoon  ;  and  we  talked  with  Mr. 
Robertson,  and  asked,  '  Where  is  the  Bishop  (of  Capetown) 
going  to .'' '  Said  he,  '  Aha !  that  bishop  has  come  to  put 
all  things  properly.  For  Sobantu  has  gone  astray  greatly  ; 
I  don't  suppose  that  he  will  ever  come  back  here.'  Again 
he  said, '  The  bishop  has  come  to  tell  the  people  to  abandon 
the  teaching  of  Sobantu,  for  Sobantu  has  gone  astray  ex- 
ceedingly ;  he  has  rebelled  ;  he  does  not  believe  in  God 
our  Father  and  in  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord.'  William  and  I, 
however,  contradicted,  saying,  '  As  to  Sobantu,  we  know 
that  he,  for  his  part,  is  a  man  who  believes  exceedingly. 
When  has  that  (which  you  speak  of)  come  upon  him  .'' ' 
Said  he,  '  When  he  was  in  England,  he  rebelled  ;  his  book, 
too,  speaks  badly.' 

■"  I  wish  now  to  hear  plainly  whether,  indeed,  they  have 
spoken  truth  or    not,   Mr.  Robertson    and    others,  to  wit, 


1864.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  87 

that  you  no  longer  believe.  But  I  know  that  there  is  not 
a  word  of  truth  in  what  they  say.  Just  the  one  thing 
is,  that  we  believe  in  God  our  Father  who  knows 
everything." 

Like  the  preceding,  the  following  is  a  literal  translation. 

It  comes  from  the  young  catechist,  William,  a  convert  of  the 

American  Mission,  and  it  shows  pretty  clearly  the  nature  of 

the  work  done  by  Bishop  Gray  among  the  native  flock  of 

the  Bishop  of  Natal. 

'■'■May  29,  1864. 

"  I  have  received  your  letter,  Nkosi ;  I  am  very  thankful  for 
it.  I  rejoice  also  because  I  find  that  you  are  well,  both  in 
body  and  soul.  For,  indeed,  so  it  is,  upon  my  word,  that 
there  is  a  great  noise  among  all  people  about  you  :  some 
say,  '  Sobantu  has  rebelled  ' ;  others  say,  '  Sobantu  goes 
astray ' ;  'tis  so  continually  with  them  all. 

"  But,  Nkosi,  see !  do,  I  entreat,  make  a  guess,  and  promise 
that  you  will  return.  For,  you  know,  Nkosi,  to  expect  and 
wait  for  you  is  but  a  short  matter  ;  but,  according  to  their 
talk,  you  will  never  more  return  at  all. 

"  Also,  the  other  day  there  arrived  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  ; 
he  just  came  to  have  a  look  at  Ekukanyeni,  accompanied 
by  Mr.  Robertson.  They  went  also  to  the  place  of  worship 
[St.  Mary's  native  chapel]  in  town,  going  to  see  the  people. 
We  asked  about  Sobantu.  But  Mr.  Robertson  made  a  long 
discourse  ^  to  all  the  people  ;  he  said,  *  Sobantu  will  never 
again  come  back  :  Sobantu  has  rebelled  entirely,  he  has 
gone  astray.  His  going  astray  we  white  people  don't 
wonder  at,  for  it  has  been  always  so  among  the  white 
people ;  there  are  always  arising  people  such  as  he.' 
Whereupon  I  asked,  and  said  to  Mr.  Robertson,  'What, 
then  }  do  not  you  know  Sobantu,  that  he  is  a  man  who 
believes  entirely  in  God?'  He  assented.  Then  said  I, 
'  Well  then,  when  did  he  begin  to  rebel,  when  he  was  in 
England,  or  here  .'' '     Said   he,   '  At  the  time  he  left  this 

*  Of  course,  by  direction  of  Bishop  Gray,  who  did  not  speak  Zulu. 


88  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

country  he  had  already  begun  to  rebel ;  but  when  he 
arrived  in  England,  he  rebelled  altogether.'  I  contradicted. 
But,  Nkosi,  there  was  much  more  which  I  cannot  possibly 
write,  the  whole  of  it.  .  .  .  Nkosi,  I  salute  you  very  much. 
I  remember  you  every  day.  I  don't  forget  you  for  one 
single  day.  But  to  see  a  letter  coming  from  you  is  quite  as 
if  I  were  dreaming.  Salute  for  me  kindly  to  the  Nkosi- 
Kazi ;  salute  for  me  to  the  young  ladies  ;  salute  for  me  to 
the  boys ;  salute  all  those  who  love  us  together  with  you. 
Our  Father,  who  is  over  all,  preserve  you,  deliver  you  from 
all,  grant  you  that  the  wealth  of  the  Holy  Spirit  may 
abound  to  you." 

The  following  lines  were  written  by  another  native 
catechist,  who  had  also  been  disturbed  by  Bishop  Gra}''s 
proceedings : — 

"  My  Lord,  it  was  pleasant  to  hear  your  words  ;  for  we  were 
in  a  state  of  great  excitement,  not  knowing  what  is  the  real 
state  of  the  case.  I  also  said  about  you,  Nkosi,  it  cannot 
possibly  be  true  for  us,  for  you  had  come  to  bring  light 
among  those  in  darkness.  I  say,  your  doing  was  not  like 
a  white  man  ;  it  was  like  the  words  which  say,  '  He  sends 
forth  his  sun  upon  evil  and  upon  good,' — the  way  by 
which  you  came  among  us  continually.  But  before  God 
our  Father  we  may  be  comforted  about  you  until  we  see 
your  face." 

Of  these  and  other  little  letters,  the  Bishop  justly  says  that 
they 

"  give  evidence  of  a  solid  and  permanent  work,  wrought  by 
God's  grace  in  preparing  these  natives  for  future  usefulness 
among  their  people.  Their  intellectual  powers  have  been 
cultivated,  as  well  as  their  hearts  :  they  have  been  taught  to 
think  about  religion,  and  not  merely  crammed  with  dogmatic 
formulae,  although,  in  such  exercise  of  their  reasoning  powers, 
they  have  compelled  me  to  give  close  attention  to  dififi- 


1855.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  89 


culties,  which  in  English  teaching  are  too  commonly  passed 
over  or  altogether  ignored." 

From  the  letters  written  by  his  native  converts  after  the 
cruel  and  demoralising  interference  of  Bishop  Gray,  we  have 
to  go  back  to  the  time  of  his  settlement  with  his  family  in 
Natal. 

To  G.  S.  Allnutt,  Esq. 

"  Maritzburg,////)'  6,  1855. 
"  It  was  high  time  for  me  to  come  out  here.  The  people  in 
charge  have  gone  on  madly  with  their  expenditure  in  my 
absence.  It  requires  a  large  stock  of  Christian  patience 
and  fortitude  to  bear  the  discovery  from  day  to  day  of  large 
sums  of  money  wasted  during  my  absence  in  the  most 
prodigal  manner,  spent  without  any  authority  from  me,  yet 
in  such  a  way  that  I  cannot  help  bearing  the  consequences. 
Imagine  their  having  made  a  water-course  on  the  Mission 
farm,  full  two  miles  in  length,  to  bring  water  to  a  paltry 
cottage  for  the  farmer  and  his  family,  the  said  cottage 
being  within  about  five  minutes'  walk  of  a  running  stream, 
and  having  also  (as  Mr.  Ellis  believes)  water  close  above 
it.  Not  a  single  thing  has  been  done  by  the  Mission 
farmer,  whom  Bishop  Gray  sent  out,  to  provide  food  for 
any  of  the  party.  Every  morsel  for  himself  and  his  family, 
for  every  person  and  animal  connected  with  our  operations, 
has  still  to  be  benight  at  high  prices,  though  enormous  sums 
have  been  spent  on  profitless  labour.  The  worst  is  that  he 
is  utterly  unfit  for  the  business  of  a  farmer,  and  I  am  now 
occupied  in  the  painful  process  of  removing  him  and  putting 
Ellis  over  all  the  farming  operations.  My  whole  occupation 
since  my  arrival  here  has  been  that  of  paying  debts  incurred 
during  my  absence, — a  great  part  of  them  without  any 
necessity  for  their  ever  having  been  incurred, — and 
retrenching  the  expenditure  of  the  Mission." 

His  thoughts  were  at  this  time  occupied  necessarily  in  a 
great  degree  with  considerations  for  the  temporal  welfare  of 


go  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

his  people,  both  EngHsh  and  native.  To  the  question  whether 
a  young  man  might  hope  to  earn  a  living  in  Natal  as  an 
architect,  he  replies  with  a  conditional  negative.  If  he  be 
willing  to  be  of  use  generally  in  promoting  the  civilisation  of 
the  natives,  the  prospect  might  be  not  discouraging.  Mission 
schools  were  to  be  founded  amongst  the  native  kraals  at  the 
rate  of  about  four  in  each  year,  each  to  be  placed  in  charge  of 
a  clergyman  in  full  orders,  assisted,  if  possible,  by  a  deacon 
with  three  or  four  catechists,  whose  business  it  would  be  to 
itinerate  to  the  neighbouring  kraals  belonging  to  the  chief 
among  whose  people  the  school  would  be  established.  The 
Bishop's  purpose  was  to  introduce  among  them  the  growth  of 
cotton,  indigo,  &c.,  and  to  get  them  to  build  themselves  houses 
after  the  European  style.  The  chief,  he  thought,  should  have  a 
dwelling-place,  a  church,  and  a  court-house  for  the  administra- 
tion of  native  justice.  There  was,  further,  the  building  of  the 
central  station,  the  completion  of  which  would  require  a  sum 
ranging  between  i^5,ooo  and  £6,000.  For  this  there  would 
be  need  of  competent  advice  and  help,  and  unless  some  one 
possessed  of  sufficient  architectural  knowledge  could  be  found, 
resort  must  be  had  to  the  native  carpenters.  Work  of  this 
kind  must  be  carried  on  in  various  parts  of  the  diocese. 

The  task  of  civilising  thus  begun  was  exposed  to  many 
hindrances  and  dangers.  Speaking  of  the  coming  of  the 
Kafir  children,  early  in  1856,  he  says  : — 

^'  Our  great  experiment  is  actually  in  progress.  Last  Thursday 
I  received  at  the  station  nineteen  little  Kafir  boys,  all  the 
sons  of  principal  men,  and  thirteen  more  are  promised  ;  and 
it  is  quite  impossible  to  say  what  the  end  may  be.  Perhaps 
all  may  speedily  come  to  nothing.  Perhaps  some  '  inyanza ' 
my  get  up  a  cry  of  witchcraft  against  us,  or  sickness  may 
break  out.  However,  we  hope  for  the  best :  and  up  to  this 
time  they  are  as  happy  as  possible,  and  several  can  already 
read  all  their  letters.     But  we  sadly  want   the  means   of 


1856.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  91 

amusing  them.  Alas  !  alas  !  the  Annabella  with  all  my 
philosophical  instruments  on  board,  struck  on  the  bar 
last  week,  and  is  gone  to  pieces.  We  fear  nothing  will  be 
saved." 

The  sequel  in  the  history  of  the  friendship  between  the 
Bishop  and  Mr.  Maurice  is  so  sad  that  we  are  tempted  to  dwell 
on  the  language  in  which  Mr.  Maurice  in  these  earlier  days 
speaks  of  the  work  of  his  friend.  He  says  in  a  letter  to  Mrs. 
Colenso,  August  19,  1856: — 

"Tell  the  Bishop,  with  my  kindest  love,  that  the  battle  he 
is  fighting  is  ours  also  ;  nothing  less  than  the  battle  whether 
the  devil  or  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  God. 
Everything  is  coming  in  England,  and  perhaps  quicker  still 
in  this  country  (Ireland),  in  which  we  are  staying  for  a  few 
weeks,  to  that  issue.  Romanists  and  Protestants  will  have 
to  ask  themselves,  not  whether  they  believe  in  a  Pope  or  no 
Pope,  but  whether  they  believe  in  a  God  of  Truth,  or  a  God 
of  Lies.  Each  must  be  tried  by  the  answer  ;  and  each  must 
have  his  own  tree  cut  down,  because  it  cumbers  the  ground, 
if  it  is  not  found  to  have  the  good  root,  and  not  the 
accursed  one.  .  .  .  All  you  are  doing  for  the  Kafir  children 
and  for  the  Zulus  and  your  own  is  really  fulfilling,  in  the 
best  and  simplest  way,  that  duty  which  comes  upon  us  with 
so  many  complications — the  deliverance  from  the  yoke  of  a 
tyrant,  by  telling  them  of  their  true  King.  It  seems  to  me 
as  if  all  civilisation  and  all  Christianity  had  that  same 
foundation,  as  if  devil-worship  was  the  common  enemy 
which  both  in  their  difffercnt  ways  have  to  struggle  with."^ 

It  is  sad  that  such  a  friendship  as  this  should  have  been 
interrupted  here  (broken  permanently,  assuredly,  it  cannot 
be),  because  Mr.  Maurice  refused  to  see  that  the  historic  sense 
in  the  strict  meaning  of  the  term  is  a  faculty  of  quite  late 
growth  in  the  onward  course  of  the  world,  and  therefore  that 

^  Life  of  F,  D.  Maurice,  ii.  296. 


92  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iii._ 

the  application  of  modern  codes  of  historical  honesty  to  ages 
before  this  faculty  was  developed  beyond  the  merest  germ,  was 
simply  ridiculous.  But  even  if  there  should  be  differences, 
and  these,  too,  wide  differences,  on  the  nature  and  value  of 
historical  evidence,  it  was  an  unhappy  thing  for  Mr.  Maurice, 
and  an  unhappy  thing  for  the  progress  of  religious  thought  in 
this  country,  that  he  should  insist  on  regarding  opinions 
antagonistic  to  his  own  as  not  merely  erroneous  but  immoral 
and  corrupting,  fatal,  in  short,  to  the  first  principles  of  faith  in 
a  living  and  righteous  God.  Coming  events  were  not,  thus 
far,  casting  their  shadows  before  them. 

The  following  letters,  relating  to  this  time,  will  give  some 
account  of  his  work  and  of  the  special  difficulties  which  he  had 
to  contend  with  in  it. 

To  G.  S.  Allnutt,  Esq. 

'■^  March  2,  1857. 
"  I  am  cast  down  by  the  state  of  things  at  S.P.G.,  but 
not  discouraged.  I  doubt  not  the  hand  of  God  is  in  it  ; 
and  I  wish  to  make  no  complaint,  but  wait  patiently  His 
time.  Of  course,  our  work  here  cannot  go  on  vigorously 
until  the  Society  votes  a  grant ;  but  meanwhile  the  time  is 
well  employed  in  mastering  the  language  and  preparing 
educational  books,  which  latter  work  keeps  me  a  close 
prisoner  daily  at  my  desk." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"/«()' 7,  1857. 
The  rules  of  the  S.P.G.  are  most  inconvenient  and  absurd. 
Instead  of  requiring  us  to  give  correct  and  complete  de- 
tailed accounts  of  how  money  has  been  spent  (they  can 
always  cut  off  supplies  from  an  improvident  bishop),  they 
require  us  to  say  beforehand  how  the  money  will  be  spent, 
which  in  a  colony  where  things  are  so  continually  shifting 
and  changing  it  is  impossible   to  do.  ...  It  behoves  the 


1858.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  93 

Society  to  have  confidence  in  the  bishops  of  the  Church,  and 
not  act  upon  the  mean  peddhng  system  which  they  now 
seem  to  have  adopted.  ...  I  seriously  beheve  that  I  shall 
be  driven  to  the  Church  Missionary  Society  for  help  for 
this  people  committed  to  my  charge.  I  dare  not  let  their 
best  interests  be  wasted  by  the  incapables  of  Pall  Mall 
without  doing  my  best  to  find  a  remedy  elsewhere." 


To  THE  Rev.  T.  P.  Ferguson. 

"EKUKANYENI,/;//y  7,  1857. 

"Just  now  we  are  in  a  very  critical  position,  one,  I  mean, 
which,  well  improved,  may  be  productive  of  incalculable 
good  to  the  future  of  this  diocese,  but,  if  neglected,  may  not 
ever  be  regained.  You  will  have  heard  that  S.P.G.  has 
granted  i^icxDO  a  year  for  three  years  to  Natal.  Now  we 
have  upon  the  spot  two  clergymen  and  three  catechists,  who 
will  consume  between  them  ;^700  of  this  grant.  I  want,  if 
possible,  to  bring  out  two  more  clergymen  and  one  good 
catechist,  likely  to  become  a  clergyman,  for  the  other  ^300. 
Now,  dear  friend,  will  you  come  and  help  me  .''  There  arc 
no  dignities  to  tempt  you,  only  work,  blessed  work.  It  is 
really  most  refreshing  to  see  these  }^(i  boys  and  half  a  dozen 
girls,  including  now  Panda's  son,  Umkungo.  But  1  sadly 
want  help  for  the  work,  such  help  ^.i,  yoiL  could  give  me." 

To  G.  S.  Allnutt,  Esq. 

'■^January  13,  1858. 
"S.P.G,  affairs  have  assumed  a  somewhat  serious  form,  if  I 
understand  rightly  the  tenor  of  Mr.  Hawkins's  letter,  a 
passage  of  which  I  have  had  transcribed  for  your  inspection  ; 
and  please  also  to  let  Bishop  Gray  see  it,  if  I  cannot  find 
time,  as  I  fear  I  shall  not,  to  write  to  him  by  this  mail.  .  .  . 
Bishop  Gray  will,  I  am  sure,  fight  my  battle  for  mc,  as  well 
as  his  own,  in  this  matter.  I  will  not  trouble  him  about 
others,  for  he  has  work  enough  on  his  hands.  God  help 
him  !   one   of  the    noblest,  most  truc-hcartcd,    and    loving 


94  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  iiil 

men    that    ever    lived,    to    be    so    used    by   a    couple    of 
secretaries." 

The  Bishop  felt  very  keenly  the  part  taken  by  the  secre- 
taries of  the  S.P.G.  in  reference  to  this  grant  to  the  Natal 
diocese,  and  to  the  inclusion  in  that  grant  of  a  sum  of  ;£^25o 
received  thus  far  from  the  Bishop  of  Capetown.  This  sum,  he 
contended,  was  not  included  in  the  grant  by  the  vote  of  the 
Society ;  and  the  point  was  carried  in  his  favour.  But  the 
conditions  of  the  grant  pointed  in  his  belief  to  a  strange  mis- 
conception of  the  circumstances  under  which  the  work  of  the 
diocese  must  be  carried  on.     It  was  certain 

"  that  a  missionary  to  the  heathen  cannot  be  made  in  a  day ; 
that  it  takes  at  least  three  years  to  make  a  man  capable  of 
understanding  and  speaking  the  native  tongue  decently  ; 
and  that  therefore  the  Society  must  lay  it  down  as  an 
axiom  to  expect  nothing  of  any  missionary  for  three  years. 
Instead  of  that  they  have  now  a  certain  most  ridiculous 
practice  of  limiting  their  grants  for  three  years.  This  is 
fatal  to  the  hope  of  good  men  coming  out.  There  is  no 
reason  why,  when  dealing  with  missions  to  the  Europeans, 
a  grant  made  to  a  place  should  not  be  revocable  in  three 
years  provided  that  the  person  employed,  if  a  faithful 
labourer,  be  assured  that  he  will  be  continued  somewhere 
else  upon  the  Society's  staff,  so  long  as  the  Church  sup- 
plies funds.     As  regards  the  heathen,  the  rule  is  absurd." 

To  G.  S.  Allnutt,  Esq. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  April  I,  1858. 
"  How  can  I  thank  you  sufficiently  for  all  the  trouble  you 
have  taken  for  me,  and  for  copying  out  that  correspondence 
with  the  Colonial  Church  and  School  Society,  and  for  con- 
ducting all  those  complicated  financial  matters  .''  Most 
agreeably  was  I  surprised  with  the  latter ;  and,  to  tell  you 

the  truth,  I  was  getting  very  anxious  and   uneasy 

Your  letter  has  made  me  quite  light  and  happy,  and  I  trust 
thankful — thankful  to  Him  who  has  raised  me  up  such  a  kind 


1858.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  95 

and  wise  friend,  and  thankful  to  yourself  for  all  your 
laborious  exertions. 
"  Mr.  Hawkins  has  outdone  himself  in  his  last  letter  by  this 
mail.  He  has  got  the  Committee  to  disallow  Dr.  Mann's 
and  Mr.  Prescott's  expenses  out  (;^i5o),  while  they  have 
allowed  their  stipends  as  labourers,  and  thereby  admitted 
their  value  to  the  Mission.  And  observe  I  did  not  ask  the 
£\^o  as  a  fresJi  grant  in  addition  to  the  block  sum,  but 
only  to  be  allowed  out  of  the  £1000  a  year,  as  one  of 
the  best  ways  in  which  I  could  employ  it,  for  I  need  not  say 
such  men  could  neither  of  them  be  picked  up  among  the 
kraals  of  Natal.  I  have  written  to  press  this  point  again  on 
the  Committee  ;  and  I  cannot  believe  that  if  Mr.  Gell  or  any 
friend  puts  the  plain  truth  before  them,  they  will  refuse 
their  sanction  to  this,  more  especially  as  I  have  told  them, 
that,  if  I  have  to  pay  it,  it  must  be  taken  out  of  the  small 
sum  of  i^28o  which  I  have  still  reserved  of  Sir  G.  Grey's 
money,  with  which  I  hoped  to  build  some  additional 
accommodation  for  our  poor  boys,  who  now  eat,  sleep, 
play,  study,  and  worship,  37  of  them  besides  young  men, 
all  in  one  room. 

"But  Mr.  Hawkins  has  gone  even  further  than  this 

When  Mr.  Wathen  landed,  seeing  how  very  suitable  persons 
they  were,  I  entertained  the  hope  that  I  might  secure  them 
for  the  heads  of  a  Girls'  Institute  to  match  our  Boys'.  I 
then  hoped  that  the  Governor,  as  he  had  often  promised, 
would  take  Dr.  Callaway  wholly  off  my  hands,  and  that 
would  have  set  ^^"200  at  my  disposal.  So  I  thought  in  that 
case  I  should  be  able  to  allow  Mr.  Wathen  (or  if  not  him, 
some  one  else)  i^ioo  a  year  as  head,  and  ^^50  for  the  sup- 
port of  ten  girls.  But  feeling  a  little  delicacy  about  absorb- 
ing so  much  of  the  Society's  money  on  this  particular 
station  on  my  own  responsibility  (though  I  have  not  the 
slightest  doubt  as  to  the  expediency  and  ultimate  necessity 
of  so  doing),  and  wishing  further  to  pay  all  respect  and 
attention  to  the  '  old  gentleman '  at  Pall  Mall,  I  wrote  to 
put  the  matter  before  the  Society,  and  to  ask  their  leave  to 
reserve  the  ^^150  of  their  grant  for  that  purpose,  if  I  saw 


96  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

the  thing  was  practicable  at  any  time.  Now  what  do  you 
suppose  Mr.  Hawkins  writes  in  reply  .-^  '  The  Committee 
trust  that  they  see  in  your  proposal  to  reserve  a  portion  of 
the  grant  of  ;^iooo  a  year  for  a  girls'  school  proof  that  the 
allowance  which  they  were  able  to  grant  last  year  was  suffi- 
cient for  the  present  wants  of  the  diocese ' !  !  !  And  that 
when  he  knows  that  there  are  1 20,000  savages  in  the  dis- 
trict, and  scarcely  a  teacher  among  them  all, — when  he 
knows  that  C.M.S.  spends  ^i  1,000  per  ann.  upon  the  70,000 
natives  of  New  Zealand,  in  addition  to  what  the  S.P.G., 
the  Wesleyans,  the  R.  Catholics,  and  others  spend — whereas 
here  all  that  is  spent  by  S.P.G.  is  ^1500  per  ann.,  and  the 
other  bodies  are  doing  absolutely  nothing  or  next  to  nothing. 
In  fact,  ;^i500  will  just  support  four  stations,  and  at  the 
very  least  we  need  ten.  I  have  written  to  ask  the  Society 
to  make  another  grant  of  ;!^iOOO  a  year  ;  and  if  Mr.  Cell 
will  put  his  shoulder  to  the  wheel,  we  shall  get  it.  But  Mr. 
Hawkins  goes  on  to  add,  '  They  are,  however,"  of  opinion, 
that  such  reservations  are  hardly  within  the  meaning  of  the 
'^OQAoX.ys grants  for presejit purposes'  Now  what  am  I  to 
do .''  If  I  had  (as  I  have)  spent  the  whole  £\0Q0,  and  then 
asked  for  an  additional  ^150,  I  should  have  had  the  charge 
brought  against  me  of  first  obtaining  block  sums,  and  then 
special  ones.  Now  that,  to  obviate  this  (and  you  see  what 
my  principle  has  been  all  along,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Hawkins's 
letter  to  Mr.  Gell),  I  propose  to  reserve  ^^^150  out  <?_/"  the 
block  sum  for  this  specific  purpose,  I  am  told  that  this  is 
not  to  be  done.  What,  then,  is  to  be  done  .''.... 
^'  The  popular  style  which  suits  so  well  an  English  audience  is 
not  exactly  that  which  our  natives  require.  They  want 
simplicity — distinctness  ;  and  the  teacher  must  have  the 
power  of  realising  their  exact  condition,  as  entirely  ignorant 
of  all  our  conventional  phrases,  of  our  ordinary  knowledge, 
of  everything  except  what  their  savage  life  must  teach  them 
by  daily  experience,  but  withal  as  intelligent  enough,  and 
capable  of  taking  in  any  mental  food  which  is  fit  for  them, 
and  digesting  it,  if  it  be  digestible.  And  then  it  requires 
patiejice,  patience,  patience,  by  means  of  which   Mr.  Baugh 


1S58.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  97 

has  succeeded  in  obtaining  wonderful  results  in  the  short 
time  we  have  had  him.  I  send  you  the  first  results  of  our 
boys'  efforts  at  printing,  the  whole  being  composed  and 
struck  off  by  themselves  with  Mr.  Baugh's  superintendence. 
Our  white  printer  will  not  lend  a  hand  to  help  them. 
Indeed,  I  should  not  be  surprised  if  there  is  some  sort  of 
trade  union  here,  formed  to  exclude  the  natives  from  being 
taught  any  mechanical  trades." 

The  following  letters,  written  during  this  year  (1858),  were 
cited  against  the  writer  at  the  so-called  Capetown  trial  in 
1863:— 

To  THE  Bishop  of  Capetown. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  March  2,  1858. 
"  I  am  afraid  you  will  be  grieved  this  mail  by  a  communica- 
tion from  the  Dean.  Of  what  kind  it  will  be,  I  cannot,  of 
course,  say  beforehand  ;  but  the  simple  fact  is  that  I  am 
directly  at  issue  with  him  on  the  subject  of  our  Lord's  real 
presence  in  the  Holy  Eucharist,  and  that  I  feel  bound  to 
protest  against  the  views  he  holds,  to  the  utmost  of  my 
power.  .  .  .  But  these  things  are  trifles  compared  with  what 
will  cause  you  much  greater  pain,  whether  you  agree  with 
my  views  or  differ  from  them.  May  God  guide,  and 
comfort,  and  keep  you,  in  this  and  all  the  other  many 
trials  by  which  I  fear  your  path  is  beset." 

To   THE   SAME. 

''  April -i,  1858. 
''  By  this  mail  you  will  receive  from  me  a  copy  of  the  sermons 
which  I  have  preached  on  the  Holy  Eucharist,  and  another, 
I  expect,  from  the  Dean.  What  your  own  views  are  on  the 
subject  in  question  I  know  not.  ...  I  am  grieved  that  you 
should  be  troubled  in  this  matter,  when  }'ou  have  so  much 
else  to  trouble  you  ;  but  unless  I  am  judged  and  deposed 
as  a  heretic,  I  must  live  and  die  preaching  the  doctrines  of 
these  sermons  in  this  my  post  of  duty,  and  it  will  be 
miserable  to  feel  that  every  sermon  I  preach  will  sound  to 
VOL.  I.  H 


98  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

the  Dean  as  heresy.  ...  I  need  hardly  say  that  under  such 
circumstances  it  will  be  impossible  for  us  to  work  together 
with  any  cordiality  henceforward.  .  .  .  And  if  I  am  not 
myself  to  be  removed  from  my  office,  heartily  glad  should 
I  be  if  one  of  [his  friends]  would  present  him  with  a  good 
living  in  England." 

To   THE   SAME. 

''August  2,  1858. 
"  You  will  see  that  one  of  our  resolutions  requests  me  to 
ascertain  how  this  stands  from  the  Primate.  I  need  hardly 
say  that  the  reference  was  made  to  him  rather  than  to  your- 
self, from  no  want  of  respectful  sense  of  duty  to  you  as 
Metropolitan,  but  because  it  is  considered  that  a  question 
of  this  nature,  which  was  not  of  the  nature  of  an  appeal 
from  a  judicial  decision,  but  one  of  inquiry  respecting  the 
principles  of  the  Church  of  England,  ought  more  properly 
to  be  addressed  to  the  Primate." 

These  passages  from  letters  written  with  the  frankness  of 
private  or  unofficial  correspondence  were  recited  at  the  so- 
called  trial  in  Capetown  by  way  of  showing  that  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  had  thus  far  recognised  the  Metropolitical  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown.  They  certainly  show  a  great 
regard  and  respect  for  himself  personally,  and  a  readiness  to 
acknowledge  and  correct  errors  and  mistakes,  if  any  such  had 
been  made  ;  and,  doing  this,  they  explain  the  language  of 
Bishop  Cotterill,  of  Grahamstown,  when  he  speaks  of  Bishop 
Gray  as  fully  expecting  to  find  in  Bishop  Colenso  a  willing 
instrument  for  the  furtherance  of  his  plans.  This  impression 
would  naturally  be  strengthened  by  some  passages  in  a  letter 
from  Bishop  Colenso  "  to  the  clergy  and  laity  of  the  united 
Church  of  England  and  Ireland  in  the  Diocese  of  Natal,"  dated 
August  II,  1858.  In  this  letter,  which  was  also  cited  at  the 
so-called  trial,  he  mentions  that  Bishop  Gray,  declining  to 
pronounce  an   official  judgement  on   the  question  raised  by 


1858.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  99 

Dean  Green,  had  given  an  opinion  to  the  efifect  that,  while 
the  Dean's  statements  went  far  beyond  the  teaching  of  the 
Church  of  England,  those  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  or  some  of 
them,  were  cast  in  a  form  which  might  lead  to  misunderstanding. 
^'  Such,"  added  Bishop  Colenso,  "  being  the  opinion  of  the 
Metropolitan  on  this  point,  I  conclude  there  must  be  passages 
in  my  sermon  which  are  liable  to  be  thus  misrepresented." 
The  admission  might  imply  an  excess  of  deference  ;  but  it 
could  do  nothing  more.  The  question  of  authority  in  this 
matter  was  put  aside ;  and  Bishop  Gray  administered  to 
Dean  Green  a  very  wholesome  rebuke  for  having  without 
cause  presented  his  Bishop  as  teaching  false  doctrines,  and 
expressed  his  hope  that  as  a  Christian  man  he  Avould  express 
his  sorrow  for  the  slight  which  he  had  offered  to  the  Bishop  in 
his  own  Cathedral.  The  Dean  had  continued  sitting  in  his 
place  in  the  choir,  before  the  congregation,  during  the  Holy 
Communion,  refusing  to  communicate  with  the  Bishop,  and 
compelling  him  to  go  through  the  whole  service  on  an 
ordination  Sunday  alone.  By  this  method  of  Jeddart  justice, 
Mr.  Green  condemned  the  Bishop  without  trial  and  even 
without  accusation,  and  left  the  proof  to  be  found  or  not 
found,  as  the  case  might  be,  afterwards. 

In  this  matter  the  Dean  had  acted  with  one  other  clergy- 
man only  ;  and  the  Bishop  naturally  felt  that  such  action 
struck  at  the  root  of  all  Church  order.  He  wrote,  therefore,  to 
the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  November  19,  1858,  pointing  out  that 
they  had  been  probably  led  to  take  this  course  by  the  lan- 
guage of  Bishop  Gray  himself,  who  had  said  that  "  Prcsb\-ters 
may  for  grave  matters  present  a  bishop."  Against  the  inter- 
pretation put  on  this  expression  by  these  clergymen  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  emphatically  protested  on  the  ground  of 
Church  order  and  common  propriety.  This  interpretation 
was  that  a  single  Presbyter,  or  two  or  three,  in  a  diocese 
might  present  the  Diocesan.     The  Bishop  added  : — 

H  2 


loo  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

"  I  find  that  the  American  Church,  who  have  doubtless  well 
considered  authorities  in  this  matter,  beyond  what,  with  the 
limited  means  at  my  command,  I  am  able  to  do,  have  laid 
it  down  as  a  rule  that  a  bishop,  or  two-thirds  of  the  clergy, 
alone  can  present  a  bishop.  And  this  precedent  appears  to 
me  to  be  confirmed  by  a  sense  of  common  propriety." 

Another  letter,  written  in  December  1858,  shows  how  clearly 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  had  already  discerned  and  laid  down  the 
lines  within  which  the  controversy  must  be  decided.  It  will 
be  seen,  therefore,  that,  although  the  circumstances  were 
changed  five  years  later,  there  was  no  change  in  his  position, 
and  therefore  no  room  for  the  charge  that  he  then  hit  upon  a 
mode  of  resistance  and  escape  of  which  before  he  had  not 
even  dreamed.     The  letter  speaks  for  itself. 

To  THE  Bishop  of  Capetown. 

''^December  \,  1858. 
"I  hope  that  when  the  Bench  of  Bishops  meets,  they  will  take 
into  consideration  the  question  of  metropolitical  jurisdiction 
as  well  as  the  constitution  of  Church  Councils.  .  .  .  So,  too, 
I  use  the  word  Province  of  the  South  African  dioceses  ;  but 
only  in  a  popular  way.  I  see  clearly  Canon  Jenkins,  and 
probably  the  Dean,  does  not — but  looks  upon  you  as  an 
independent  Metropolitan.  That  you  would  be,  doubtless, 
if  you  were  Metropolitan  by  Church  authority,  and  not  by 
Royal  Patent.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  we  are  really  still 
in  a  certain  sense  within  the  Provi7ice  of  Canterbury,  by 
virtue  of  the  clause  which  makes  your  proceedings  subject, 
not  merely  to  the  supervision,  but  to  the  revision,  of  the 
Primate.  To  take  for  example  an  instance.  Suppose  that 
on  a  clergyman  who  had  signed  adherence  to  our  present 
rules  of  Council  ...  I  found  it  necessary,  because  of  some 
infringement  of  the  rules,  to  pass  a  sentence  of  suspension, 
and  he  appealed  to  you,  and  you  (as  you  say  you  should 
do)  reversed  my  proceeding,  of  course  I  must  submit  to 
this,  as  the  Bishop  of  Exeter  to  the  Archbishop  in  the  case 


1S58.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  lor 

of  Mr.  Gorham  ;  but  I  imagine  that  I  should  do  right  to 
appeal  to  the  Archbishop,  not  to  reverse,  but  to  revise,  your 
decision,  and  that,  if  he  decided  against  you,  you  would  be 
bound  in  conscience  to  follow  that  judgement  incase  of  any 
future  appeal  of  a  similar  kind.  This  is  the  way  in  which 
our  mutual  relation  at  present  presents  itself  to  my  own 
mind.  But  it  would  be  most  desirable  that  the  whole 
matter  should  be  settled  for  us  by  the  proper  authorities  in 
England." 

It  follows  that  no  judgement  of  a  South  African  or  any  other 
Metropolitan  could  be  final,  whether  their  patents  were  valid, 
or  not ;  that  the  appeal  from  these  Metropolitans  to  the 
English  Primate  was  to  him  not  personally,  but  in  his  official 
capacity ;  and  thus  that  from  him  there  lay  the  final  appeal 
to  the  Sovereign  in  Council.  Although  therefore  points  of 
detail  might  remain  unsettled,  the  path  of  procedure  was 
perfectly  clear,  and  the  path  in  South  Africa  was  the  same  as 
that  in  England,  with  the  same  precautions  for  the  freedom  of 
all,  and  the  same  safeguards  against  merely  ecclesiastical 
decisions.  But  this  administration  was  for  Bishop  Gray  intoler- 
able. He  had  already  formulated  to  himself  the  constitution 
of  a  Church  with  a  discipline  far  more  wide-reaching  than  that 
which  survived  in  the  Church  of  England,  and  appealing  to 
tlieological  standards  which  could  not  be  imposed  upon  the 
English  clergy.  When  the  more  serious  trouble  came,  Bishop 
Gray  expressed  not  merely  surprise  but  astonishment  at  the 
opposition  which  he  then  encountered  ;  but  there  was  really 
no  reason  for  cither  feeling.  He  had  shut  his  eyes  to  the 
warning  ;  but  the  warning  had  been  given  with  unmistakable 
clearness. 

We  shall  soon  see  the  Committee  of  the  Church  Council  in 
collision  with  Dean  Green.  This  assembly  of  clergy  and  laity 
had  been  convened,  as  the  Bishop  was  specially  careful  to  tell 
them,  not  as  a  synod  nor  as  possessing  any  legislative  powers, 


I02  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

but  simply  as  a  deliberative  conference,  summoned  not  for 
making  laws  binding  all  members  of  the  Church  in  the  diocese, 
but  to  determine  whether  such  a  synod  should  be  called  at 
some  future  time.  This  Council,  therefore,  could  bind  only 
himself,  so  far  at  least  as  this,  that,  without  pledging  himself 
beforehand  to  adopt  implicitly  any  advice  which  they  might 
give  him,  he  should  feel  it  his  duty  to  follow  any  course 
recommended  to  him  by  a  decisive  vote  of  the  conference, 
if  possible,  and  as  far  as  possible,  in  all  points. 

If  such  a  legislative  assembly  should  be  hereafter  convoked, 
the  name  given  to  it  would  be  a  matter  of  no  moment.  It 
might  be  known  as  a  synod,  or  by  any  other  title. 

"  But  the  real  question  that  will  be  before  you  is  simply  this. 
Is  it  desirable  that  at  regular  intervals  a  body  similar  to 
this  should  be  convened,  for  deliberating  and  deciding  upon 
matters  properly  falling  within  its  cognisance  ;  that  is  to 
say,  matters  of  discipline  and  not  of  doctrine,  which  are  of 
consequence  for  the  progress  and  welfare  of  the  Church  of 
England  in  this  diocese  ?  I  say,  matters  properly  falling 
within  its  cognisance,  because  the  power  of  such  a  synod 
must  evidently  be  limited  by  the  fact  of  our  connexion  with 
the  Mother  Church  of  England.  And  the  limits  in  question 
are  very  clearly  defined  in  the  Bill  which  was  introduced 
into  the  British  Parliament  about  three  years  ago,  by  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  for  the  purpose  of  giving  legal 
effect  and  validity  to  the  proceedings  of  colonial  synods." 

This  Bill,  carried  through  the  Lords,  was  lost  in  the  lower 
House,  chiefly  owing  to  the  opinion  that  for  the  management 
of  Church  affairs  in  the  colonies  statutable  aid  was  unnecessary,, 
and,  if  unnecessary,  highly  inexpedient.  Colonial  dioceses 
were  now  left,  in  matters  within  their  cognisance,  to  act  for 
themselves.  From  the  subjects  within  their  range  the 
Authorised  Version  of  the  Scriptures,  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  and  the  Articles  of  Religion  must  be  excluded  ;  but 


1858.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  103 

they  would  have  power  to  deal  with  dififerences  arising  between 
the  Bishop  or  clergy  and  the  lait)-  in  any  part  of  the  diocese  ; 
with  the  general  questions  of  finance  in  reference  to  Church 
work,  whether  among  the  Christian  or  heathen  population  of 
the  land  ;  of  the  extension  of  Church  work  either  among 
towns  or  villages  ;  of  joining,  where  it  might  be  practicable  so 
to  do,  the  office  of  school  teacher  with  the  work  of  the 
ministry  ;  of  the  management  of  Church  schools,  and  education 
generally  ;  of  patronage,  clergy  discipline,  the  tenure  of  Church 
property,  and  other  like  subjects.  The  convening  of  such  an 
assembly  would  relieve  him  as  Bishop  of  an  immense  weight 
of  care  and  responsibility  which  he  had  now  to  bear  alone,  by 
having  to  decide  points  of  importance  by  his  own  single 
judgement,  assisted  only  by  the  counsel  of  a  few  of  the 
presbyters. 

"  I  have  longed,"  he  added,  "  for  the  time  when  the  whole  body 
of  the  clergy  and  the  laity  who  should  come  to  my  help 
should  together  make  their  own  laws,  and  change  the 
government  of  the  Church  in  this  diocese  from  an  apparent 
despotism  under  a  single  head,  or  from  a  state  of  anarch}- 
and  confusion,  to  one  of  orderly  and  constitutional  rule." 

There  remained  the  question  of  the  constitution  of  such  an 
assembly,  and  this  in  its  turn  involved  the  consideration  of 
parishes,  the  qualification  of  parishioners,  and  of  candidates  for 
representing  the  laity  in  synod,  as  well  as  of  the  manner  of 
voting  (whether  in  person  or  by  voting  papers).  But  without 
waiting  for  the  summoning  of  such  an  assembl)',  there  was 
one  subject  which  he  especially  desired  to  commend  to  their 
attention  ;  namely,  the  arrangement  of  the  difference  which 
had  arisen  between  himself  as  Bishop  and  the  parish  of  Durban. 

"  I  would  here,"  he  said,  "  place  myself  wholly  in  the  hands  of 
the  conference,  assured  that  you  will  consider  both  what  is 
due  to  my  office  among  }-ou,  and  what  is  due  to  the  peace 


I04  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

and  welfare  of  the  parish  of  Durban/  and,  with  it,  of  the 
whole  Church  in  this  Diocese.  Most  thankful,  indeed,  shall 
I  be,  if  no  other  good  result  from  this  conference  but  the 
healing  of  this  one  breach,  which  has  been  a  source  of  grief, 


^  It  is,  perhaps,  enough  to  say  here  that  in  this  parish  a  good  deal  of 
opposition  had  been  offered  to  arrangements  which,  for  the  mere  purpose 
of  securing  orderly  Church  government  and  administration,  seemed  to  the 
Bishop  not  merely  desirable  but  necessary.  To  the  request  that  a  revenue 
might  be  raised  by  the  letting  of  all  the  seats  in  the  church  the  Bishop 
had  replied  that  he  strongly  objected  to  the  pew-rent  system  ;  that  all  the 
members  of  the  Church  of  England  "  have  an  equal  right  to  share  in  the 
privileges  of  God's  House,  where  rich  and  poor  should  be  able  to  meet 
together  in  the  presence  of  Him  who  is  the  common  Maker  and  Father 
of  all."  He  refused,  therefore,  to  sanction  the  mortgaging  of  the  pew-rents 
in  order  to  clear  off  the  debt  on  the  building  ;  but  he  expressed  his  readi- 
ness to  take  the  responsibility  of  the  debt  upon  himself,  relying  "  for  the 
return  of  the  money  which  "  he  had  "  already  lent,  or  may  be  required  to 
expend  for  the  completion  of  the  buildings,  solely  upon  the  voluntary 
offerings  of  the  congregation."  He  had  directed  that  Holy  Baptism 
should  in  his  diocese  "  be  always  administered,  as  prescribed  in  the 
Rubric,  in  the  time  of  Divine  Service,  after  the  second  lesson."  He  had 
also  urged  obedience  to  the  Rubrics  relating  to  the  offertory,  and  ex- 
pressed his  conviction  that  the  people  would  soon  come  to  value  the 
privilege  of  giving,  be  it  ever  so  little,  according  to  their  substance,  for  the 
service  of  God,  and  of  having  their  gifts  "laid  reverently  by  the  minister 
on  the  table  of  their  Lord,  and  thankfully  presented  with  a  prayer  for 
God's  blessing  upon  it"  (Sermon  at  Richmond,  Natal,  1856).  In  this 
work  of  Church  administration  he  was  aided  by  Archdeacon,  afterwards 
Bishop,  Mackenzie.  But  the  moderation  of  the  Bishop's  counsels  failed 
to  satisfy  a  certain  section  of  the  parishioners  of  St.  Paul's,  Durban,  and 
their  opposition  took  a  form  which  threatened  an  outbreak  of  physical 
violence.  The  Bishop  therefore  issued  an  order  for  the  closing  of  the 
yet  unconsecrated  building,  until  he  should  be  assured  that  no  such 
attempts  at  disturbance  would  be  made,  at  the  same  time  directing  the 
Archdeacon  to  hire  a  room  at  the  Bishop's  charges  for  the  celebration  of 
Divine  Service.  The  party  of  malcontents  chose  to  treat  all  this  as  'an 
offensive  display  of  sacerdotalism,  and  to  regard  the  Bishop's  directions 
as  a  virtual  secession  from  the  Church  of  England.  Their  manifesto, 
April  1856,  called  upon  their  brother  parishioners  to  "stand  fast  to  the 
truth,"  and  to  "  trample  over  these  efforts  at  innovation."  The  clouds 
seemed  for  a  moment  to  be  rather  dark  ;  but  the  troubles  gradually 
passed  away,  without  committing  the  Bishop  to  any  departures  from  the 
decent  order  of  the  Church  of  England. 


1858.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  105 

I  doubt  not,  to  others  concerned  as  well  as  myself :  we  shall 

not  then  have  met  in  vain." 


The  questions  of  the  intelligent  Zulu,  which  furnished  to 
English  journalists  an  excellent  subject  for  merriment  and 
mockery,  were  to  have  serious  consequences  for  the  colony  of 
Natal,  and  for  the  world  which  lay  beyond  its  limits.  They 
were  to  provoke  the  zeal  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  to  the 
illegal  exercise  of  an  irresponsible  power,  which  under  the 
guise  of  making  peace  introduced  only  a  long  and  disastrous 
schism.  To  a  certain  extent  the  seed  sown  by  Bishop  Gray 
after  the  so-called  Capetown  trial  fell  on  congenial  ground. 
The  elements  of  division  had  long  been  at  work  on  the  soil  of 
Natal,  and  they  were  furnished  not  by  Protestants  and  Puritans, 
but  by  those  who  would  rather  have  associated  themselves 
with  Thomas  of  Canterbury  or  Hildebrand.  Among  the 
clergy  of  the  Natal  diocese  were  some  who  had  a  very  hearty 
admiration  for  the  method  after  which  Gregory  VII.  dealt 
with  the  emperor  at  Canossa,  and  who  had  every  wish,  so  far 
as  their  power  went,  to  go  and  do  likewise.  This  is  the 
substance  of  a  complaint  urged  against  Dean  Green,  Canon 
Jenkins,  and  the  Rev,  R.  Robertson  in  the  Report  of  a 
Committee  appointed  (1S58)  by  the  Church  Council,  of  which 
more  will  be  said  hereafter,  to  consider  the  general  question 
of  their  secession.  So  far  as  it  affected  themselves  only,  their 
action  was  a  matter  of  supreme  indifference  ;  but  it  ceased  to 
be  so  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  general  interests  and  wel- 
fare of  the  Church  in  Natal.  These  clergymen,  it  seems,  had 
withdrawn  from  the  preliminary  Church  Conferences  on  pleas 
which  were  proved  to  be  mere  pretence.  Their  real  ground  was 
a  resolution  not  to  sit  in  any  assembly  which  questioned  or 
denied  their  right  to  dictatorship  and  called  upon  them  to  vote 
along  with  the  laity.  The  Report  stated  it  as  an  indubitable 
fact  that  Dean  Green  looked  upon  himself  not  as  a  fallible 


io6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

human  being,  intrusted  with  special  spiritual  functions,  but 
as  an  unerring  interpreter  of  Scripture,  holding  that  not  only 
the  laity  but  his  fellow-presbyters  and  the  bishops  were  bound 
to  receive  his  interpretations,  and  to  bow  to  his  opinions  and 
belief  The  Dean,  it  seems,  had  expressed  surprise  that  the 
Church  Conference  "  did  not  tremble  when  he  told  them  that 
they  were  acting  in  opposition  to  the  Bible."  If  he  did  so 
speak,  the  words  of  the  Report  were  not  one  whit  too  strong. 
In  the  same  Hildebrandine  spirit.  Dean  Green,  as  we  have  seen^ 
had  at  an  ordination  service  refused  to  communicate  with  the 
Bishop  because  the  latter  had  preached  a  sermon  ^  of  which  the 
Dean  was  pleased  to  disapprove.  His  action  revealed  a  re- 
markable rule  which  in  the  Dean's  judgement  ought  to  be 
followed  in  matters  concerning  himself 

"  He  says,"  the  Report  tells  us,  "  that  in  case  of  any  difference 
of  opinion  between  himself  and  the  laity  of  the  Church,  the 
laity  are  bound  to  yield  obedience  to  him,  pending  an 
appeal  to  higher  ecclesiastical  authority,  just  as  in  case  of  a 
difference  of  opinion  between  the  clergy  and  the  Bishop  the 
clergy  would  be  bound  to  obey  the  Bishop,  pending  an 
appeal  to  yet  higher  authority.  When  the  case  of  difference 
of  opinion  between  the  Bishop  and  himself  arises,  he  at 
once,  and  without  hesitation,  disregards  the  authority  of  the 
Bishop,  while  he  makes  his  appeal.  He  thus  wishes  for 
unqualified  and  unhesitating  obedience  when  it  is  himself 
who  is  to  be  obeyed.  When  it  is  himself  who  is  to  be 
obedient,  he  thinks  it  the  more  convenient,  or  more  correct> 
practice  to  ignore  the  authority  of  his  immediate  superior^ 
the  Bishop  of  the  diocese." 

In  such  case  he  could  of  course  discharge  in  his  own  person 
the  functions  of  accuser,  jury,  and  judge.  Having  thus  exer- 
cised summary  jurisdiction  by  insulting  the  Bishop  within  the 
choir  of  his  Cathedral,  Mr.  Green  could  condescend  to  summon 

^  One  of  the  sermons  on  the  Eucharist  already  mentioned,  p.  99. 


1S58.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  \or 

the  Chapter  to  consider  the  conduct  of  the  Bishop  in  putting 
forth  heresy.  Such  conduct,  the  Report  adds,  "speaks  with 
an  emphasis  that  additional  words  could  not  increase."  In 
the  meeting  held  for  the  purpose  of  electing  delegates  for  the 
Church  Conference,  Mr.  Green,  although  he  declined  to  oppose 
this  course,  )-ct  insisted  that  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  of 
the  Church  Council  had  been  guilty  of  altering  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  Church  of  Christ,  and  "  further  avowed  that  he 
held  their  guilt  to  be  akin  to  that  of  those  who  wounded 
the  natural  body  of  Christ  while  on  earth."  The  Committee, 
therefore,  declare  summarily  that  while  the  Dean  holds  the 
Council  to  be  guilty  of  heinous  sin,  they  on  their  side  hold 
him  guilty  of  insubordination  towards  his  Bishop,  of  arrogant 
assumption  towards  his  brother  clergymen  and  the  laity  of 
his  Church,  and  of  extraordinary  perversion  of  the  meaning 
of  Scripture. 

Among  the  settlers  in  the  district  of  Durban  at  this  time 
was  a  clergyman  who,  in  the  words  of  the  Committee,  "  had 
made  himself  somewhat  notorious  by  adopting  in  the  church 
of  Pinetown  obsolete  gorgeous-coloured  vestments,"  and  who 
had  been  forbidden  by  the  Bishop  to  minister  in  his  diocese 
without  a  licence.  Objecting  to  an  order  issued  by  the  Bishop 
with  reference  to  the  offertory,  this  clergyman  informed  the 
Bishop  that  his  spiritual  authority  lay  in  abeyance,  and  that  he 
purposed  to  continue  to  exercise  his  powers  as  a  priest  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Taking  courage,  he  then  wrote  to  Bishop 
Gray,  presenting  the  Bishop  of  Natal  as  a  schismatic,  and  was 
informed  by  the  Metropolitan  that,  if  any  clergyman  in  the 
diocese  of  Capetown  had  pursued  the  same  course,  he  should 
have  deemed  it  his  duty,  after  sundry  warnings,  to  excom- 
municate him  for  disobedience.  The  clergyman  thus  rebuked 
wrote  again  to  Bishoi)  Gray,  telling  him  that  he  differed  from 
him  in  this  matter,  and  that  he  should  continue  to  celebrate 
the  Eucharist  after  his  own  fashion  without  f{ivincr  heed  either 


io8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

to  him  or  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  This  clergyman,  the 
Committee  add,  Dean  Green  took  into  his  confidence,  and 
made  him  his  adviser  and  counsellor. 

The  conduct  of  these  four  "  priests,"  as  they  loved  to  style 
themselves,  becomes  important  as  a  sign  not  merely  of 
division  but  of  anarchy,  which  should  have  warned  Bishop 
Gray  of  the  dangerous  nature  of  the  materials  with  which  he 
had  to  deal.  In  his  own  subsequent  proceedings  against  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  he  might  have  these  and  other  such  men  on 
his  side  ;  but  any  successor  in  his  metropolitical  see  who  should 
follow  a  Puritan  or  Protestant  model  would  be  resisted  by 
them  with  fully  as  much  pertinacity  as  that  with  which  he 
felt  himself  bound  to  withstand  Bishop  Colenso.  The  schism 
effected  by  Dean  Green  and  his  supporters  in  1858  was  a  token 
of  the  temper  to  be  exhibited  later  on  in  the  so-called  Church 
of  South  Africa. 

To  G.  S.  Allnutt,  Esq. 

"BlSHOPSTOWE,//^;?^  15,  1858. 

■"  The  Governor  (Mr.  Scott)  has  made  a  grant  of  ;^300  to  this 
Institution,  which  I  hope  he  will  allow  me  to  use  for  build- 
ing purposes.  But  there  is  no  cordiality  whatever  on  his 
part  towards  us — no  generosity.  I  am  sure  that  he  would 
not  have  given  a  penny  if  he  could  have  helped  it.  He  did 
hold  back  as  long  as  he  could,  months  after  he  had 
promised  ;^20o  a  year  to  Mr.  Allison  ;  and  at  last  was 
compelled  by  force  of  circumstances — our  work  staring  him 
and  everybody  in  the  face  in  such  a  way  that  it  could  not 
be  passed  over — to  grant  something ;  and  he  has  given  as 
little  as  he  could.  For  when  he  gives  ;i^200  to  Mr.  Allison, 
i^200  to  Dr.  Callaway,  and  ;{J"200  to  Mr.  Pearse,  neither  of 
whom  has  a  single  native  to  maintain  (so  that  the  whole 
iJ^20o  can  be  used  for  teachers),  and  neither  of  whom  stands 
in  any  need  of  buildings  to  accommodate  40  or  50  children, 
as  we  do,  it  is  plain  that  iJ"300  to  us  is  by  no  means  a 
proportional  grant.     Nay,  the  last  two  have  not  even  begun 


1 


1858.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  109 

their  work  ;  .  .  .  .  and  our  work  is  well  advanced,  and 
tested  already  by  its  fruits.  We  have  four  good  printers, 
and  four  young  carpenters,  and  eight  or  ten  agriculturists  ; 
and  besides  all  this  zve  have,  in  addition  to  all  our  boys  and 
girls,  a  station  work  going  on  here  quite  as  important  as 
at  either  of  the  other  two  stations, — I  mean,  a  work  among 
adults,  which  we  carry  on  here,  as  well  as  our  educational 
proceedings.  So  that  to  have  been  just,  the  Governor  should 
have  given  us  ^^300  per  ann.  for  our  schools  (which  will  just 
pay  the  expenses  of  the  living  and  clothing  of  the  children), 
and  i^200  (as  he  has  given  to  the  rest)  for  our  station,  for 
obtaining  Industrial  Teachers  ;  and  then  for  building  our 
Normal  Institution,  the  only  one  in  the  colony,  and  which 
will  train  teachers,  I  trust,  for  the  whole  land,  he  should 
have  given  iJ'500.  As  I  have  said,  all  that  I  can  hope  is 
that  he  will  allow  his  ^^"300  to  be  spent  in  buildings.  I  may 
thank  Mr.  Shepstone  for  getting  this  grant.  I  have  ex- 
plained how  matters  stand  to  Bishop  Gray,  and,  as  far  as  I 
can,  to  Sir  George  Grey.  If  the  former  has  any  influence 
with  our  present  Colonial  Secretary,  and  if  our  Church  con- 
troversies here  do  not  stand  in  the  Avay,  I  dare  say  our 
Governor  may  get  a  hint  from  head-quarters  ;  and  I  feel 
sure  he  will  if  Sir  G.  Grey  gets  to  England,  and  his  voice  is 
heard  in  Downing  Street.  The  change  of  Mr.  Pine  for  Mr. 
Scott  is  the  old  story  of  King  Stork  and  King  Log.  We 
must  try  to  realise  that  one  Ruler  is  over  all,  and  work  on 
patiently  and  thankfully  with  what  He  gives  us.  But  the 
trial  is  to  see  precious  time  running  away,  and  opportunities 
wasted  which  may  never  be  recovered.  Our  own  natives 
could  now  be  reached  everywhere,  and  the  Zulu  nation  is 
quite  open  to  us  ;  but  nothing  can  be  done  with  spirit  as 
regards  either." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"July  3,  1858. 
"  Every  month  makes  some  important  change  in  our  circum- 
stances here,  and  gets  me,  I  dare  say,  at  S.P.G.  the  character 
most  undeserved,  of  changing  my  plans  continually,  as  if  it 


lo  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  in. 

were  possible  that  matters  could   be  conducted  in  such  a 
land  as  this,  where  everything  is  rough  and  raw,  with  the 

order  and  certainty  attainable  in  older  colonies At 

this  moment   Mr.  Scott  has  got  himself,  I  imagine,  into  a 
terrible  difficulty.    He  has  been  giving  away  land  by  whole- 
sale in   the   most  unwise  and  wasteful  manner.     Nothing 
could  have  been  more  rash  and  prodigal  than  his  proceeding, 
by  which  every  third-rate  person  in  the  colony  was  enabled 
to  pick  up  a  valuable  piece  of  land.       The  result  is  that  all 
the  choice  land  in  the  colony,  except  that  which  is  to  be 
found  in  the  reserves  set  apart  for  the  natives  ten  years  ago, 
is  given  away  for  nothing,  before  an  emigrant  lands.       Now 
the  emigrants  are  coming  fast  ;  and  one  ship  has  just  come, 
and  with  it  also,  by  the  same  mail,  a  very  stringent  order 
from  the  Secretary  of  State  that  he  is  to  give  away  no  more 
land,  but  to  sell  at  an  upset  price  of  4/-  per  acre.     This  will 
be  a  most  unfortunate  thing  for  the  new  comers  and  the 
many  who  are  making  preparations  to  come.     And  all  this 
has  arisen  from   the  Governor's   rash  and  hasty  measures 
taken  to  please  the  populace;  and  without  waiting,  it  would 
seem,  to  see  whether  they  would  be  approved  by  the  Home 
Government,  he  has  committed  himself  to  bring  out  these 
emigrants.     Some  few  voices  were  raised  at  the  time  in  the 
colony   against   the    proceeding.       But,    naturally   enough, 
they  were  soon  hushed,  while  every  one  was  looking  after  his 
own   grant,   and    scrambling   to  get    a    good    slice    of  the 
colonial  cake.     But  nozu  will  come  the  difficulty,  and  I  fear 
there  will  be  great  discontent  and  disappointment.     As  to 
the   colony  itself,  it   is   almost   ruined   by  these   large  and 
wasteful  grants,  in  the  hands  of  persons    ....   who  are 
utterly  unable  to  deal  with  them  profitably.     But  I  foresee 
what  the  Governor  will  look  to  for  his  escape.     The  poor 
natives  will  be  made  to  suffer ;    and  the  lands  reserved  for 
them,  which  the  Europeans  have  for  some  time  been  covet- 
ing, will  be  taken   away  from   them,  unless   Dr.   Hodgkin 
and  other  good  friends  of  the  Aborigines  at  home  look  well 
after  the   matter.      They  have    plundered    the    natives   of 
j^  1 0,000  a  year  in  taxes,  have  done  nothing  whatever,  year 


1 858.  EARL  V  WORK  IN  NA  TAL.  1 1 1 

after  year,  to  educate  and  improve  them,  and  now  make 
their  very  ignorance  and  barbarism  the  excuse  for  motives 
to  plunder  them  of  their  lands  also. 
^'  Our  Governor  unhappily,  though  a  most  good-natured,  is 
one  of  the  weakest  of  men.  He  has,  from  the  very  first,  as 
Dr.  Mann  tells  me,  had  a  very  strong  prejudice  against  our 
work  as  being  '  unpractical '  ;  and  I  am  not  sure  that,  on 
his  first  arrival,  the  Doctor  himself,  either  from  the 
Governor's  talk  or  his  own  inexperience,  did  not  share  in, 
and  perhaps  assist  the  prejudice.  The  fact  is  the  Governor 
came  to  the  colony  about  eight  months  after  we  began 
our  work  with  the  young  savages,  when,  thank  God,  we  had 
made  considerable  progress  with  them,  but  yet  things  were 
necessarily  in  the  rough  about  us.  .  .  .  The  Governor  came, 
but  he  never  made  a  single  inquiry  as  to  what  we  were 
doing  or  had  done.  He  saw  a  little  oasis  in  the  midst  of 
the  wilderness  of  heathen  barbarism.  And  he  seems  to 
have  taken  for  granted  that  it  was  the  most  easy  thing  in 
the  world  to  effect  what  we  had  done, — that,  in  fact,  we  had 
done  nothing, — we  were  not  practical.  The  Governor's 
notion  of  'practical'  seems  to  be  confined  to  the  idea  of 
raising  cotton,  and  such-like  out-of-doors  occupations, 
which  may  make  a  native  a  better  machine  for  the  purposes 
of  his  European  masters,  but  not  a  better  or  a  nobler  man. 
It  so  happened  that  during  that  very  year  we  //(^rt' gathered 
a  good  cotton  crop,  and  our  bo}'s  had  been  worked  daily  in 
that  employment.  But  the  season  was  over  when  the 
Governor  came.  He  saw  nothing  of  the  labour,  and  as  he 
cared  not  to  hear  or  learn  any  of  our  proceedings,  he  went 
away  from  the  station  as  wise  and  as  prejudiced  as  he 
came.  .  .  .  To  my  surprise,  a  few  months  after,  I  found 
that  he  intended  to  set  up  Institutions  of  his  own  all  over 
the  land,  taking  for  granted  that  what  we  had  done  (by 
patience  and  hard  labour,  and  '  practical  skill ')  he  could  do, 
and  far  more.  He  tried  his  hand  at  an  abortive  experiment 
on  Zwart-Kop,  and  spent  ii^6oo  or  iJ^/oo  most  uselcssK-.  The 
whole  thing  came  to  the  ground  and  has  been  utterly 
abandoned,  and  was   certainly  one    of   the    most    absurd 


:i2  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  in. 

attempts  at  '  practical  working '  that  I  ever  heard  of.  .  .  , 
But  I  feel  it  to  be  due,  partly  to  myself,  but  above  all  to 
Mr.  Baugh,  who  really  deserves  the  credit  of  almost  all  that 
has  been  done  here — to  let  my  friends  know  at  all  events, 
whatever  the  Governor  may  think  or  say,  that  our  present 
state  of  efficiency  in  what  Mr.  Scott  calls  '  industrial 
pursuits '  is  but  the  simple  consequence  of  adhering  steadily 
to  the  course  we  have  all  along  from  the  very  first  been 
pursuing,  gaining  a  step  wherever  we  could,  pushing  on 
from  one  point  to  another  as  opportunities  enabled  us, 
adding  one  occupation  to  another  as  soon  as  we  had  the 
means  of  doing  so  effectually,  and  so  as  not  to  break  down 
and  be  a  laughing-stock  at  the  very  outset.  ...  I  have 
long  thought  that  I  should  like  to  speak  out  my  mind  to 
you  and  any  other  dear  friends  at  home  on  this  point. 
And  I  feel  it  to  be  due  to  Mr.  Baugh,  as  well  as  to  myself, 
to  say  distinctly  that  our  present  industrial  doings,  and  the 
success  which  by  God's  blessing  has  already  attended  them, 
are  not  i7i  the  least  degree  due  to  any  stimulus  or  assistance 
we  have  lately  received  (except  in  sewing),  but  to  the  steady 
developement  of  the  plans  we  have  all  along  been  pursuing, 
as  far  as  circumstances  allowed." 

To  THE  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  December  7,  1858. 
"  My  DEAR  Friend, 

I  have  just  received  the  copy  of  your  sermon  on  the 
Eucharist,  which  I  have  been  so  long  and  so  anxiously 
expecting,  because  I  have  heard  from  your  sister,  and  my 
clergy  and  laity  have  heard  from  the  Bishop  of  Capetown, 
and  through  a  private  letter  which  the  Dean  has  communi- 
cated, that  you  dissent  from  the  views  expressed  in  my  two 
published  sermons,  and  have  in  that  sermon  embodied  your 
own  views  in  distinction  from  them.  I  have  read  the 
sermon,  I  need  not  tell  you,  with  the  deepest  interest  ;  and 
time  being  precious  to  both  of  us,  and  the  subject  of  vital 
consequence,  I  will  not  beat  about  the  bush  for  words  to 


I 


iSsS.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  113 


express  what  my  impressions  are  on  reading  it,  but  come 
at  once  to  the  point.  My  conviction,  then,  is  confirmed 
that  you  have  never  actually  read  my  sermons  (having,  I  am 
quite  sure,  plenty  of  other  work  to  do),  but  have  been  con- 
tent with  hearing  from  your  sister,  or  from  Bishop  Gray, 
some  extracts  from  them,  coupled  with  the  interpretations 
which  they  from  their  point  of  view  might  very  likely  put 
upon  the  whole.  I  say  this  because,  from  beginning  to  end 
with  the  exception  of  two  short  expressions,  one  at  the 
beginning  and  one  at  the  end,  in  which  you  seem  to  set 
forth  the  tJiesis  and  the  sum  of  the  discourse,  I  do  not  find 
a  single  sentence  with  which  I  do  not  heartily  agree,  nor 
any  view  expressed  with  regard  to  the  Eucharist  and  our 
Lord's  presence  in  it  which  differs  from  that  which  in  far 
feebler  words  I  have  tried  to  set  forth  in  my  sermons.  I 
must  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  two  passages  I  refer  to 
must  be  interpreted  by  the  intermediate  context,  and  that 
though  I  do  not  think  I  should  use  either  of  them  myself 
without  some  modification,  yet  in  reality  they  mean  no 
more  than  I  myself  should  try  to  utter  in  my  own  way. 
The  first  of  these  passages  is  that  where  you  say,  '  Can  we 
say  that  the  Presence  of  our  Lord,  which  is  promised  in  the 
Eucharist,  is  a  presence  of  a  different  kind  from  that  which 
a  faithful  Christian  may  expect  in  ordinary  prayer  ? '  And 
you  go  on  to  condemn  a  negative  reply.  If  you  really  do 
mean  that  there  is  a  difference  in  kind  in  our  Lord's  presence 
at  the  Eucharist,  so  that  then,  and  then  only,  '  can  there  be 
a  communication  to  believing  souls  of  our  Lord's  manhood  ' 
— for  this  is  what  my  Dean  asserts — and  that  this  difference 
in  kind  is  caused  by  the  presence  of  the  priest,  which  is 
after  all  the  point  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole 
question,  then  I  must  admit  that  there  is  a  serious  difference 
between  your  views  and  mine.  Otherwise  I  have  said,  as 
you  have,  that  '  we  eat  the  flesh  and  drink  the  blood  of  the 
Son  of  Man,  when  wc  approach  in  humble  faith  the  \\o\y 
Eucharist,  in  order  that  so  wc  may  be  able  more  vividly  to 
realise  His  presence  at  all  times,  and  may  eat  Him,  and 
live  by  Him  habitually  and  constantly.'  I  have  said  that 
VOL.  I.  I 


114  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  in. 

'  it  is  the  appointed  means  for  keeping  us  in  mind  of  the  real 
presence  of  our  Lord  with  us  at  all  times.' 
"  The  other  passage  in  your  sermon  is  where  you  say  that 
'  this  Sacrament  transcends  all  other  modes  of  intercourse,' 
and  proceed  to  assume  that  those  who  think  with  me, 
'  place  it  on  the  same  level  with  them,  forgetting  that  it  is 
the  specially  Christian  ordinance,'  whereas  I  have  said,  *  We 
must  hold  that  the  highest  and  holiest  form  of  worship,  in 
which  we  can  eat  the  flesh  and  drink  the  blood  of  the  Son 
of  Man,  is  when  we  partake  of  the  one  bread  and  the  one 
cup  as  members  of  one  body  in  Him,'  in  addition  to  such 
words  as  I  have  quoted  before.  But  would  you  say  that  a 
missionary  deacon,  because  he  lives  far  away  among  the 
heathen,  and  has  no  priest  at  hand,  cannot  partake  of  the 
same  kind  of  spiritual  food  as  his  more  favoured  brother 
living  in  town,  or  that  a  pious  Christian  who  lives  20  or 
30  miles  away  from  town  in  this  land,  and  thinks  it  more 
profitable  to  himself  and  his  family  to  hold  family  worship 
at  home  on  Sunday  than  to  ride  into  town  in  a  broiling 
sun  or  pouring  rain  to  partake  of  the  Holy  Eucharist,  was 
therefore  debarred  from  any  share  in  the  same  kind  of 
spiritual  food  which  the  priest  alone  can  offer  him  ?  For 
this,  I  repeat,  is  the  real  point  at  issue  in  the  conflict  which 
I  am  engaged  in.  The  Dean  has  distinctly  put  in  words  a 
statement  of  his  belief  that  '  in  the  tiuo  Sacraments  there  is 
a  communication  (if  by  believing  we  are  able  to  receive  it) 
from  our  Lord's  manhood  to  us'  (I  do  not  quite  like  the 
expression,  but  it  is  his  own — I  mean  the  '  Lord's  man- 
hood ') ;  '  but  in  the  ordinary  assemblies  there  is  not  a 
communication  to  all  believing  souls  of  our  Lord's  man- 
hood.' And  I  distinctly  assert  that  if  there  be  in  the  Lord's 
Supper  a  'communication  of  our  Lord's  manhood,'  or 
whatever  may  be  the  mystical  blessing  expressed  by  eating 
His  body  and  drinking  His  blood,  we  have  no  Scriptural 
warrant  for  saying  that  the  same  kind  of  blessing  is  not 
given  in  other  modes  of  communion  with  Him  who  is  our 
hope,  however  needful  it  may  be  in  order  to  receive  that 
blessing  fitly  at  all  times,  that  we  should  obey  our   Lord's 


1858.  EARL  V  WORK  TX  NA  TAL.  1 1 5 

command  with  respect  to  the  Holy  Eucharist,  as  He  shall 
give  us  the  call  and  opportunity. 
*'  P.S. — I  have  also  read  the  Sermon  on  Confession.  And  here 
again  the  question  arises,  What  do  you  understand  by 
Priest  .-*  Do  you  mean  an  episcopally  ordained  minister 
with  the  apostolical  succession  only  .-'  or  would  you  say  (as 
I  certainly  should)  that  the  absolution  which  came  from  the 
lips  of  a  '  discreet  and  learned  '  old  Dissenting  minister, 
with  the  experience  of  age  and  the  ripe  savour  of  a  tried 
and  faithful  Christian  life  about  him,  was  just  as  valid  to 
the  sin-burthened  conscience  as  that  which  might  be  pro- 
nounced by  some  young  Curate  full  of  his  notions  of  priestly 
authority  ?  " 

To  G.  S.  Allnutt,  Esq. 

''^  December  "J,  185S. 

".  .  .  .  We  have  not  much  news  to  communicate  by  this 
mail,  being  principally  interested  with  the  desperate  struggle 
now  going  on  between  our  Lieutenant-Governor  and  his 
Legislative  Council.  The  latter  have  refused  to  do  any 
business  unless  the  ;^5,ooo  reserved  upon  the  Civil  List  for 
native  purposes  (out  of  which  we  get  ^300  for  this  Institu- 
tion) shall  be  left  in  their  hands  instead  of  the  Governor's. 
I  do  not  much  fear  the  result,  even  if  they  do  get  possession 
of  it,  as  I  think,  however  other  Mission  Stations  may  fall 
short  of  the  requirements,  our  work  here  is  sufficiently 
'  practical '  and  successful  to  obtain  their  approval  and 
support.  But  this  dispute  between  the  Executive  and 
Legislative  Powers  is  a  serious  interruption  of  the  welfare 
of  the  colony.  Our  educational  affairs  especially  must  all 
remain  in  the  background  for  the  present. 
"  I  am  at  present,  and  have  been  for  some  time  past,  very 
closely  engaged  with  the  Zulu  grammar,  which  has  now 
reached  the  most  difficult  part,  and  requires  very  close 
attention." 


I  2 


Ii6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iii. 

To   THE   SAME. 

"February  5,  1859. 

"  We  have  had  by  this   mail  a  very  kind  conciliatory  letter 

from  Bishop  Gray.     His  tone  is  completely  changed,  and  I 

think  his  letter  will  do  more  to  heal  our  divisions  than  any 

severity  could  have  done." 

The  following  letter,  addressed  to  his  brother-in-law,  gives 
the  Bishop's  thoughts  and  judgement  with  reference  to  the 
mission  undertaken  by  Archdeacon  Mackenzie.  The  Bishop 
of  Capetown  had  proposed  to  the  Archdeacon  that  he  should 
serve  as  a  missionary  Bishop,  to  be  placed  under  the  see  of 
Capetown. 

To  C.  J.  Bun  YON,  Esq. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  May  9,  1S59. 
"...  The  real  hitch  about  the  Zulu  bishopric  has,  I  believe, 
been  all  along  the  difficulty  I  have  felt  in  recommending  a 
man  who  has  shown  in  many  instances  so  great  a  want  of 
judgement,  and  who  within  the  last  month  has  been  visiting 
Mr.  Crompton,^  an  open  and  avowed  rebel,  who,  having 
no  license,  administers  both  sacraments  in  his  own  chapel 
within  a  few  yards  of  the  Parish  Church  which  he  never 
enters,  the  altar  decked  up  with  all  the  frippery  of  ritualism 
and  lighted  up  with  candles  at  mid-day,  and  who  loses  no 
opportunity  of  abusing  his  Bishop  and  showing  an  utter 
contempt  for  my  authority.  When  the  Zulu  bishopric  was 
first  mooted,  I  warmly  recommended  Mackenzie,  whose 
many  excellent  points  no  one  could  more  heartily  recognise 
than  myself  But  then  broke  out  our  dissensions,  and  he 
has  ever  since  followed  the  Dean  through  the  mud,  wherever 
he  dragged  him.  I  was  obliged  to  say  that  I  could  not 
now  maintain  my  first  recommendation  of  him,  and  must 
wait  to  see  him  acquire  a  little  more  experience  before  I 
could  say  that  he  was  fit  for  such  a  difficult  post  as  that  of 
Bishop  to  the  Zulus.  After  a  while  I  saw  that,  perhaps,  he 
might  be  sent  for  a  time  as  a  missionary  presbyter,  meaning, 

^  The  clergyman  mentioned  already,  p.  107. 


1 8 59-  EARLY  I VORK  IN  NATAL.  117 

of  course,  that  he  should  be  sent  by  me  and  be  under  my 
direction.  For,  as  you  are  aware,  we  arc  here  in  the  closest 
relations  with  the  Zulus.  .  .  I  have  always  regarded  them 
as  an  outlying  portion  of  my  diocese  to  be  taken  in  hand 
on  the  first  opportunity,  and,  as  you  know,  have  made  all 
my  arrangements  to  be  able  to  go  among  them.  Now  I 
feel  very  vinch  the  putting  of  this  mission,  if  it  is  carried 
out,  under  the  see  of  Capetown,  to  be  very  undesirable  ; 
and  I  would  much  rather  have  Mackenzie  made  Bishop  at 
once  of  the  Zulus,  though  retaining  as  strongly  as  ever  my 
distrust  of  his  judgement.  He  may  do  better  among  the 
heathen  than  among  the  white  or  a  mixed  population.  .  . 
However,  if  he  is  to  go  under  the  see  of  Capetown  on  this 
mission,  or,  indeed,  if  he  is  to  go  at  all,  (as  now,  it  would 
seem,  he  must,  having  been  so  formally  asked  and  being 
willing,)  he  will  ultimately  be  made  Bishop,  and  may  as 
well  be  made  so  at  once.  One  of  his  sisters,  Alice,  is  now 
staying  with  us,  and  is,  in  every  way,  an  admirable,  first-rate 
missionary.  Now  so  greatly  do  I  object  to  the  notion  of 
his  being  directed  from  Capetown,  or  my  acting  as  mere 
deputy  for  Capetown  in  the  matter  .  .  .  that  I  have  written 
to  say  that  I  prefer  to  withdraw  my  objections  to  his  being 
consecrated,  and  recommend  him  as  earnest,  devout,  and 
energetic  (saying  nothing  of  his  judgement).  You  will  hear 
what  course  affairs  take  at  S.P.G.  But  what  I  want  to  put 
you  on  the  guard  about  is  this, — not  to  let  him  come  out  as 
an  S.P.G.  missionary,  to  work  in  the  Zulu  country  under  the 
see  of  Capetown.  It  is  a  piece  of  ecclesiastical  theory,  but 
a  practical  absurdity.  If  he  comes  out  as  Bishop  with 
S.P.G.  money,  well  and  good.  I  shall  be  rejoiced  to  give 
him  all  the  help  and  counsel  I  can,  and  he  will  be  then, 
properly,  under  the  Metropolitan  as  the  other  suffragans 
are.  But  if  he  comes  out  as  S.P.G.  missionary,  then  I  can- 
not but  hope  that  the  Society  will  think  it  right,  as  I  have 
so  often  called  their  attention  to  Zulu  matters,  to  place  him 
under  me  ;  and,  in  fact,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  Church 
represented  by  the  Archbishop  and  bench  of  Bishops  (I 
suppose)  should  not  request  me  to  regard  the  Zulu  country 


ii8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iii. 

as  an  archdeaconry  attached  to  my  See,  until   a   Bishop  is 
appointed." 

The  Bishop's  patience  was  again  tested  this  year  (July  1859) 
by  the  misconduct  and  ingratitude  of  a  man  named  Ryder, 
who  had  served  not  only  as  a  builder,  but  also  as  a  general 
overseer  at  the  Station  for  nearly  two  years.  From  the  first 
this  man  had  shown,  with  some  good  qualities,  not  a  little 
peculiarity  of  manner,  which  after  a  time  seemed  to  point  to 
serious  lack  of  principle.  It  was  not  without  reluctance  that 
the  Bishop  parted  with  prepossessions  in  his  favour  for  a 
judgement  less  severe  than  that  which  others  were  disposed  to 
pass  upon  him.  The  story  is  one  of  no  special  interest  now, 
and  it  may  therefore  be  enough  to  say  that  during  the  last 
few  months  of  his  employment  the  man  seemed  to  cast  off  all 
restraint,  and  resorted  to  the  law  courts  for  damages  against 
the  Bishop  who  had  been  faulty,  if  faulty  at  all,  only  in 
showing  him  far  too  much  kindness.  He  had  steeped  himself  in 
perjury,  having  sworn,  for  instance,  that  he  had  made  70,000 
raw  bricks  when  the  total  was  37,750  ;  that  he  had  bought 
forty  loads  [of  wood]  to  burn  them  when  he  had  bought  twenty- 
two.  But  the  judge  was  a  popularity  hunter  ;  with  him  the 
Bishop  as  a  clergyman  must  be  wrong  in  a  matter  of  business  ; 
and  in  spite  of  Ryder's  contradictions,  he  obtained  from  the 
jury  a  verdict  for  a  sum  which  the  Bishop  could  ill  afford 
to  lose,  and  for  which  the  plaintiff  had  not  a  shadow  of 
rightful  claim. 

To  THE  Rev.  F.  Hose,  Rector  of  Dunstable. 

"  BlSH0PST0WE,/«^/j'  4,  1859. 

"  I  was  rejoiced  to  see  your  handwriting  by  the  last  mail,  as 
a  reminder  of  the  past,  and  a  pledge  that  I  am  not  altogether 
forgotten  by  some  of  my  old  friends  in  England.  You  do 
not  mention  the  present  or  future  name  of  the  lady  about 


i859-  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  119 

whom  you  write.  But  I  shall  gladly  show  her  any  attention 
in  my  power  when  I  get  to  know  of  her  arrival  in  the 
colony.  I  fear,  however,  it  is  but  little  I  can  do  to  show  an 
interest  in  her  welfare.  My  rule  is  to  visit  the  white  popula- 
tion, or  rather  the  small  centres  of  white  population,  once  a 
year.  But  my  time  is  principally  occupied  with  work  for 
the  heathen.  This  is  at  present,  I  fancy,  the  only  diocese 
where  the  work  of  preparing  grammars,  dictionaries,  and 
translations  must  necessarily  fall  upon  the  Bishop.  Our 
work  began  here  with  the  foundation  of  the  See  ;  and  though 
other  Christian  bodies — as  usual — preceded  us  into  the  field, 
they  had  done  very  little  indeed  towards  laying  down  the 
language  for  other  teachers,  or  preparing  books  for  the  use 
of  the  natives.  Our  Church  of  England  missions  are  far  in 
advance  in  this  diocese  in  each  of  these  respects.  And  now, 
it  may  be,  our  Church  is  about  to  stretch  out  her  hands  for 
a  wider  grasp,  and  to  embrace  the  Zulu  people,  and  the 
tribes  of  the  Sovereignty  and  of  Kaffraria  within  her  direct 
influence." 


To  THE  Rev.  T.  P.  Ferguson. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  August  9,  1859. 

The  great  drawback  here  is  that  the  country  is  already 
saturated  with  a  corruption  of  Christianity,  and  the  natives 
have  acquired  such  a  view  of  the  character  of  God  and  of 
the  Gospel  as  keeps  them  back  from  desiring  to  have  a 
much  closer  acquaintance  with  it.  This  they  have  obtained, 
partly  from  the  example  they  have  constantly  before  them 
in  the  lives  of  unfaithful  Christians — partly  from  the  mis- 
taken teaching  of  the  missionaries.  '  God  said.  Let  them  be 
destroyed  :  the  Son  rose  up  and  said.  Let  them  be  saved, 
let  me  die  in  their  place.'  When  such  a  sentence  as  tjiis 
is  found  in  an  elementary  Catechism  of  the  most  influential 
missionary  body  in  the  colony  (besides  our  own)  as  the 
watchword  of  Christian  teaching  instead  of  St.  John's 
'  Herein  is  love,  not  that  we  loved  God,  but  that  He  first 
loved  us,  and  sent  His  Son,'  &c.,  how  hard,  and  impossible, 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 


humanly  speaking,  it  must  be  to  convey  to  these  converts 
a  true  idea  of  the  Gospel,  and  how  must  the  idea  they  have 
received  be  still  for  them  distorted  in  its  transmission  to 
others  ?  " 

To  C.  J.  BuNYON,  Esq. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  November  8,  1859. 
"Your  letter  reached  me  outspanned  for  breakfast,  a  few  hours 
from  Panda's  chief  kraal,  which  I  had  left  the  previous 
evening,  after  a  very  pleasant  and  successful  interview  with 
the  Zulu  King.  I  had  already  visited  his  son  Keshwayo, 
and  hope  that  I  have  established  happy  relations  with  both. 
Panda  has  given  us  a  most  desirable  site  for  a  mission 
station.  .  .  .  You  will  have  gathered  from  my  letters  that 
it  was  no  part  of  my  own  07'iginal  purpose  to  go  myself  as 
Bishop  to  the  Zulu  country  at  this  moment.  I  did  and  do 
contemplate  the  going  there  ultimately  if  the  Church  calls 
me  to  the  task.  But  I  do  not  think  the  country  is  quite 
ripe  at  the  moment  for  that  step  being  taken.  Until  the 
succession  is  settled — which  may  be  soon  or  may  be  delayed 
a  year  or  two, — I  think  the  Mission  work  in  Zululand  can 
better  be  overlooked  by  a  Bishop  here  than  by  one  on  the 
spot.  A  resident  missionary  would,  I  think,  be  in  no 
danger ;  but  a  resident  Bishop  of  our  Church  would  be, 
unless  the  father  can  be  brought  to  recognise  Keshwayo  as 

the  future  ruler I  shall,  however,  do  nothing  rashly 

in  the  matter  of  the  Zulu  bishopric.  My  present  feeling  is, 
and  my  dear  wife's  also,  that  I  ought  to  go,  if  called  ;  and 
if  I  ought,  I  hope  I  shall  be  found  willing  to  go,  and  so  will 
Frances,  from  no  mere  blind  enthusiasm  for  black  people, 
but  from  a  simple  conviction  that  we  are  in  this  world  just 
to  do  the  Master's  work,  wherever  He  or  His  Providence 
may  see  fit  to  place  us,  and  for  no  other  purpose  whatever." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  BlSH0PST0WE,/^z«?mr''  5>  i860. 
"  I  daresay  that  Archdeacon  Mackenzie's  having  accepted  (I 
suppose)  the  headship  of  the  Zambesi  Mission  will  have  set 


i86o.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  121 

at  rest  some  of  his  friends'  complaints  of  which  )^ou  speak. 
But,  in  case  of  its  being  necessary  for  you  at  any  time  to 
defend  my  character  in  the  matter,  I  will  just  set  down  a 
few  facts  respecting  it : — 

"(i)  It  is  wholly  untrue  that  he  went  to  England  expecting 
to  be  made  Bishop  of  the  Zulus  or  to  go  at  all  to  the  Zulus- 
He  knew  perfectly  well  that  I  was  going  to  offer  myself, 
weeks  before  he  left  Natal,  and  might  have  stopped  here 
altogether,  if  he  had  pleased. 

"(2)  It  is  equally  incorrect  to  say,  as  perhaps  some  may  sa}', 
that  he  went  home  to  be  made  Bishop  of  Natal  in  my  place. 
He  himself  told  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  and  Bishop  of  Cape- 
town that  I  wished  this,  and  then  wrote  to  me  to  say  that 
he  began  to  think  he  had  not  correctly  stated  what  I  said 
about  the  matter, — which  was  true  enough,  for  all  I  said 
was  that  I  felt  sure  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  would  nominate 
him,  if  I  vacated  the  See  (and  that  would  only  be  if  the 
funds  were  forthcoming  for  the  Zulu  country,  which  as  yet 
they  are  not), — but  that  I  did  not  at  all  know  what  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  might  say  to  it. 

"  (3)  Then  why  did  he  go  home  at  all .''  Partly  because  of 
the  act  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  in  writing  to  offer  him 
the  Zulu  mission,  telling  him  (what  he  had  not  told  me) 
that  it  would  be  placed  under  himself  as  Metropolitan, — 
and  partly  because  of  Mackenzie's  own  want  (as  I  think)  of 
proper  feeling  towards  myself,  in  that,  while  he  heard  me 
stating  my  very  strong  objections  to  that  proposal, — so 
strong,  as  I  told  him,  that  I  should  use  all  the  influence  in 
my  power  to  prevent  its  being  carried  out, — he  was  still 
determined  to  accept  the  offer  of  the  Metropolitan  and  set 
my  wishes  at  naught.  Upon  this,  rather  than  have  a 
collision  with  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  which  I  certainly 
should  have  had,  if  his  proposal  had  been  carried  out, — 
having  only  the  time  from  10  p.m.  on  Sunday  night  till 
8  a.m.  the  next  morning,  to  hear  for  the  first  time  of  the 
proposal,  and  decide  what  advice  to  give  or  what  steps  to 
take  in  consequence, —  I  said  he  had  much  better  go,  as  he 
was  determined  to  go  under  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  and 


122  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ill. 

be  made  Bishop,  than  go  as  missionary.  But  within  a  week 
or  so,  having  had  time  to  deliberate  and  take  counsel  with 
my  wife  upon  the  whole  matter,  I  communicated  to  him  my 
decision  to  offer  myself  for  the  Zulu  work,  with  which  he 
expressed  himself,  and  I  cannot  doubt  sincerely,  to  be 
altogether  satisfied, — I  might  say,  delighted. 
■"  (4)  But  if  I  said  anything  definite  to  him,  as  to  the  direct 
purpose  of  his  going  home,  it  was  that  the  best  thing  that 
could  be  done  would  be  to  send  him  to  the  Zambesi,  which 
has  actually  come  to  pass,  I  suppose." 

To  Fred.  D.  Dyster,  M.D. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  February  %th,  i860. 

"*'  I  have  long  had  your  letter  by  me,  intending  to  reply  to  it, 
but  wishing  to  be  able  to  say  something  definite  concerning 
my  own  future  movements,  as  I  am  sure  you  will  take  an 
interest  in  our  work,  and  may  be  able  in  some  way  to 
forward  it.  With  respect  to  the  Polygamy  question,  all 
my  experience  has  deepened  and  confirmed  the  convictions 
I  have  already  expressed  in  print,  that  a  most  grievous 
error  has  been  committed  all  along  by  our  Missionary 
Societies  in  the  course  they  have  been  hitherto  adopting 
Avith  regard  to  native  converts  who  have  had  more  than  one 
wife  at  the  time  of  their  receiving  the  word  of  life  in  the 
Gospel.  Lately  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  a  very 
able  missionary  of  the  Rhenish  Society  from  the  S.  W. 
coast  of  Africa  among  the  Damaras,  who  told  me  that  they 
constantly  acted  on  the  principle  I  have  advocated,  and 
that  the  best  man  of  his  flock,  the  most  devout  and 
spiritually-minded,  a  constant  reader  of  the  Gospel  and 
most  humble,  earnest  inquirer  after  truth,  and  a  regular 
communicant,  was  also  a  polygamist.  He  told  me  also 
that  the  whole  Lutheran  Church  acts  on  this  principle,  and 
especially  that  the  missions  which  a  section  of  that  body 
are  now  vigorously  prosecuting  in  the  Zulu  country  will  be 
conducted  upon  it.  This  last  is  very  important  with  refer- 
ence to  us   and   our  proceedings.     You   will  probably  ere 


I 


i86o.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  123 

this  have  met  with  paragraphs  in  English  papers  stating 
that  I  had  resigned  the  see  of  Natal  and  was  about  to 
proceed  to  the  Zulu  country.  This  is  not  exactly  true.  I 
have  not  yet  resigned  this  see  ;  but  I  have  offered,  and, 
with  my  wife's  full  approval  and  hearty  consent,  am  now 
prepared  to  do  so,  if  the  Church  at  home  desires  it ;  and  I 
am  now  in  monthly  expectation  of  a  definite  reply  from  the 
S.P.G.  upon  the  subject.  I  expect  that  the  proposal  will 
be  accepted,  and  arrangements  made  for  carrying  on  a 
vigorous  mission  work  among  the  Zulus.  My  past  ex- 
perience and  the  acquaintance  I  have  been  able  to  gain 
with  the  language,  and  the  body  of  Christian  natives  whom 
I  should  hope  to  take  with  me,  are  all  advantages  which  I 
could  not  transfer  to  another,  and  they  have  led  me  to 
conclude  that  it  is  my  duty  to  offer  myself  for  this  work 
instead  of  merely  sending  a  missionary.  It  may  be 
necessary  that  I  should  come  to  England  to  raise  funds  for 
this  purpose,  as  it  would  be  idle  for  me  to  sacrifice  my 
present  post  of  usefulness  without  the  means  of  putting  the 
experience  I  have  gained  into  present  action.  In  that  case 
I  may  hope  to  see  you  some  day  at  Tenby.  Could  }-ou  do 
anything  meanwhile  to  secure  a  few  friends  who  would  take 
a  kind  interest  in  the  work  and  stretch  a  hand  to  help,  in 
case  I  have  to  make  a  call  upon  the  Church  for  aid  in  the 
matter  ?  And  can  you  come  yourself  to  help  us,  with  your 
medical  skill,  which  would  be  invaluable — indispensable,  in 
fact  .''  We  must  have  a  medical  man  of  ability,  both  for 
the  sake  of  the  Zulu  people  and  the  mission  party.  Now, 
Captain  and  Mrs.  Barton  tell  me  that  your  health  is  not  strong 
in  England,  and  that  you  have  been  at  the  Cape  in  con- 
sequence. Our  climate,  whether  we  remain  here  in  Natal 
or  go  into  the  Zulu  country,  is  far  better  suited  than  the 

Cape,   I  imagine,    for   persons   with   delicate   lungs 

What  a  glorious  work  it  would  be  for  a  really  earnest  warm- 
hearted medical  man  to  devote  himself  to  establishing  a 
Hospital  and  raising  up  a  medical  school  in  connexion  with 
our  mission  work,  either  in  Zululand  or  Natal !  Your 
deafness,  of  which  Mrs.   Barton  tells  mc,  would  be  of  no 


124  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iir. 


consequence.  We  could  talk  and  interpret  for  you  ;  and 
the  first  thing  I  should  ask  would  be  that  you  would  put 
me  and  the  other  missionaries  through  a  simple  course  of 
medicine,  for  our  own  profit  and  our  people's.  Please  think 
this  matter  over.  I  hope  Mrs.  Dyster  will  throw  in  a  word 
to  help  you  to — shall  I  say  i* — the  right  decision.  But  God 
will  guide  you  and  us  to  do  right,  I  trust,  whatever  we 
decide  on." 

The  history  of  the  Bishop's  life  in  Natal  shows  the  impar- 
tiality of  his  devotion  to  the  interests  alike  of  the  Europeans- 
and  the  natives.  The  latter,  from  their  ignorance  and  their 
helplessness,  called  more  especially  for  his  protection  ;  but  he 
rejoiced  to  think  that  their  -wjelfare  must  be  promoted  by  the 
progress  of  English  civilisation  in  the  colony,  if  only  the 
powers  created  by  this  civilisation  were  rightly  and  conscien- 
tiously used.  When  he  spoke,  June  26,  i860,  at  the  banquet 
which  celebrated  the  opening  of  the  first  portion  of  the  Natal 
railway,  he  asked  leave  to  be  allowed  to  regard  the  event 
chiefly  from  a  missionary  point  of  view. 

*'  I  have  had  an  opportunity,"  he  said,  "  of  hearing  some  re- 
marks of  intelligent  natives  upon  what  they  have  witnessed 
this  morning,  and  it  may  interest  you,  perhaps,  to  hear  of 
what  kind  they  are.  One  who  possesses  a  wagon,  and 
seems  to  be  of  a  practical  turn  of  mind,  is  of  opinion  that 
if  these  steam  horses  are  multiplied  in  the  land,  they  will 
very  much  interfere  with  his  wagon  business.  Another 
says,  '  Since  they  can  do  these  things,  why,  if  their  hearts 
were  bad  towards  us,  they  could  tread  us  down  under  their 
feet ! '  And  a  third  wonders  that,  if  we  can  effect  all  this, 
we  cannot  also  conquer  death.  We  cannot  conquer  death 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  native  meant  it.  But  we  can  tell 
them  of  the  Lord  of  Life  ;  we  can  remember  to  connect  our 
country's  glory  and  greatness  with  her  duty  and  her 
mission  to  be,  more  than  any  other  nation,  the  messenger 
of  God's  mercy  to  all  the  ends  of  the  earth  ;  we  can  remem- 


iS6i.  EARLY  WORK  IN  NATAL.  125 


ber  that  we  have  come  to  this  land  not  merely  as  English- 
men, but  as  English  Christians,  and  that  the  Great  King, 
who  has  given  us  such  power  by  land  and  by  sea,  who  has 
given  to  us  our  great  empire,  our  commercial  spirit,  our 
genius  for  colonisation,  has  given  also  into  our  hands  the 
Book  of  Eternal  Life,  and  bidden  us  go  forth  in  His  name 
and  teach  His  Truth  to  all  nations,  more  especially  to  those 
whom  He  has  placed  under  our  sway.  We  must  seek  to 
Christianise  as  well  as  to  civilise  the  natives  round  us. 
The  two  works  must  go  on  together,  or  each  will  be  a 
failure." 

To  G.  S.  Allnutt,  Esq. 

'■'■  February  4,  1 861. 
*'  I  have  returned  safely  and  happily  from  Capetown,  where 
the  consecration  [of  Bishop  Mackenzie  for  the  Zambesi 
Mission]  took  place  on  January  i.  We  had  a  conference 
also  of  Bishops,  which  will  lead,  I  suspect,  to  some  dis- 
cussions in  England.  The  Bishop  of  Grahamstown  was  not 
present,  but  came  after  I  had  left  Capetown.  He  and  I  are 
agreed  in  direct  opposition  to  the  Metropolitan  (and,  I  sus- 
pect, S.  Oxon),  who  insists  upon  it  that  Bishop  Mackenzie 
is  one  of  his  suffragans.  We  entirely  deny  it,  and  we 
suppose  our  statements  will  become  public.  We  refer  also 
the  question  of  Polygamy  to  Convocation  for  consideration. 
My  views  are  more  decided  than  ever,  supported  as  I  now 
find  myself  to  be  by  strong  Missionary  authorities,  such  as 
I  had  not  any  idea  of  when  I  began  the  controversy. 
Bishop  Mackenzie  came  up  with  me  in  H.M.S.  Lyon,  Captain 
Oldfield,  to  Natal.  .  .  .  He  went  on  to  the  Zambesi  last 
Tuesday.  The  larger  portion  of  his  party  went  on  by  the 
Sidon  about  a  month  ago  ;  and  the  only  fear  is  that  they 
have  been  exposed  to  the  deadly  malaria  of  the  delta  while 
waiting  for  his  arrival.  He  was  kept  behind  by  the  un- 
fortunate necessity  of  having  to  wait  for  the  arrival  of  three 
bishops  to  consecrate  him  at  Capetown.  I  was  there  first : 
ten  days  before  any  other  bishop.  Then  the  Bishop  of  St. 
Helena  arrived  on  Christmas  Day,  having  been  brought  in 


126  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  hi. 

a  vessel  which  was  chartered  for  the  purpose  at  an  expense 
of  ;^250  to  the  Mission.  In  short,  the  hobby  of  having  the 
consecration  at  Capetown,  which  was  to  bear  out  the  notion 
of  the  '  South  African  Church '  sending  out  the  mission  to 
the  Zambesi,  has  been  a  very  costly  one,  and  I  think  the 
experiment  will  not  soon  be  repeated." 

To   THE   SAME, 

'^  March  5,  1861. 
'  Sir  G.  Grey  seems  to  have  now  given  up  all  idea  of  coming 
up  here,  and  I  am  very  much  inclined  to  think  all  his  plans 
for  the  Zulu  country  will  go  to  the  wall.  .  .  .  Mr.  Scott, 
our  Governor,  has  just  returned  to  us  with  flying  colours. 
I  have  not  yet  seen  him,  but  probably  shall  to-morrow 
and  learn  what  his  plans  are,  and  how  far  I  can  throw 
myself  into  them." 

Five  months  later,  August  2,  1861,  he  writes  to  Mr.  Allnutt 
to  say  that  he  has  secured  passages  to  England  for  his  family 
and  himself  on  board  a  small  sailing  vessel,  which  would  leave 
Natal  for  London  in  March  or  April,  1862.  A  month  later 
he  tells  his  friend  that  he  will  soon  receive  a  copy  of  his 
Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 

'■'  I  fully  expect  that  it  will  be  violently  attacked  by  High 
Church  and  Low.  I  am  not  sure  that  Mr.  Maurice  will 
agree  with  all  of  it.  But  this  is  not  a  time  to  care  for 
things  of  this  kind.  I  fully  believe  that  a  terrible  crisis  is 
at  hand  for  the  Church  of  England,  and  have  tried  to  do 
my  part  to  help  some  to  stand  firmly,  when  many  props 
upon  which  they  have  been  hitherto  relying  shall  be  felt  to 
give  way  under  them.  The  Bishops  of  Capetown  and 
Grahamstown  are  both  strongly  opposed  to  me,  and  ver}- 
probably  will  take  some  public  action  in  the  matter.  How- 
ever, as  I  now  hope  to  be  in  England  in  the  spring,  I  shall 
be  able  to  defend  myself  in  person,  if  necessary. 

"  I  think  that  our  Institution  may  be  considered  as  drawing 


1 86 1 .  EARLY  WORK  IN  NA TAL.  1 27 

to  an  end  for  the  present.  At  the  time  of  the  Zulu  Panic^ 
...  all  our  boys  were  scattered  to  their  homes.  It  would 
have  been,  no  doubt,  possible  to  have  recovered  them,  and 
indeed  Mr.  Shepstone  had  given  the  requisite  orders  for  that 
purpose.  But  then  several  weeks  elapsed,  and  they  were 
getting  settled  at  home.  And  unfortunately  the  health  of 
our  master,  Mr.  James,  had  given  way  completely.  .  . 
Under  these  circumstances,  as  I  have  no  other  teacher 
whatever,  but  the  young  ladies  of  my  household  and  Miss 
Mackenzie,  and  we  are  going  so  soon  to  leave  the  colony, 
Mr.  Shepstone  and  I  agree  that  it  would  not  be  wise  to 
require  the  boys  to  come  back.  .  .  Let  us  hope  that  the 
education  which  they  have  received  will  not  be  lost  upon 
them  in  after  life." 

1  The  Bishop  refers  to  a  scare  caused  by  the  rumour  of  an  intended 
invasion  of  the  colony  by  the  Zulus.  The  alarm  was  described  by  Sir 
Theo.  Shepstone  in  1871  as  a  serious  one,  "  which  turned  out  to 
have  no  real  foundation."  One  alleged  object  of  the  supposed  attack 
was  the  murder  of  the  refugee  prince  Umkungo,  and  Bishopstowe,  where 
he  was  at  school,  was  considered  a  point  of  special  danger.  "  For  some 
time,"  writes  Mrs.  Colenso,  "  the  Bishop  stood  out  against  all  sugges- 
tions that  he  himself  should  leave  the  station.  At  last,  on  the  personal 
representations  of  the  Governor,  he  consented  to  bring  his  family  into 
town  next  day.  In  the  dead  of  night,  however,  William  [the  well-known 
convert]  knocked  breathless  at  the  door  to  say  that  the  Dutch  owner 
of  the  farm  beyond  Bishopstowe  had  just  passed  in  flight  to  the  town 
with  all  his  belongings,  saying  that  a  Zulu  force  was  already  on  our  side 
of  Table  Mountain.  This  seemed  serious,  the  word  was  passed  quickly 
but  silently  round,  and  in  a  few  minutes  the  whole  valley  was  astir  and 
making  for  the  town.  William,  who  had  sent  on  his  wife  and  babies  on 
the  first  alarm,  only  joined  the  party  when  more  than  halfway  to  town, 
having  delayed,  as  he  certainly  believed  at  the  risk  of  his  life,  to  inspan 
his  wagon,  because,  he  said,  he  knew  that  the  "  little  one,"  the  Bishop's 
youngest  daughter,  could  not  walk  so  far,  and  the  "  Inkosi  himself  was 
not  strong"  (the  Bishop  was  suffering  from  a  sprain).  Very  clear  evi- 
dence of  the  groundlessness  of  the  general  panic  was  afforded  in  a  letter 
which  the  Bishop  received  the  next  day  from  the  Zulu  country,  and  in 
which  it  was  stated  that  the  Zulus,  so  far  from  intending  hostilities,  were 
themselves  apprehensive  of  an  invasion  from  Natal. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

"THE   COMMENTARY   ON   THE   EPISTLE   TO   THE   ROMANS." 

The  publication  of  the  Covivientary  referred  to  in  the 
letter  of  September,  1 86 1,  to  Mr.  Allnutt,  preceded  by  not  very 
much  more  than  a  year  the  appearance  of  the  first  part  of  the 
Bishop's  Critical  Examination  of  the  PentateiicJi.  Both  works 
pointed  to  a  condition  of  thought  not  much  in  harmony  with 
the  teaching  of  what,  for  lack  of  a  better  term,  must  be  called 
the  traditional  schools  of  Christendom  ;  and  it  was  not  likely 
that  the  members  of  these  schools  would  care  to  consider  the 
one  apart  from  the  other.  A  perusal  of  the  so-called  Cape- 
town trial  of  1863  may  leave  the  impression  that,  if  the 
volume  on  the  Pentateuch  roused  a  keener  feeling  of  indigna- 
tion for  the  disturbance  of  ground  regarded  as  inviolable,  the 
Commentary  on  the  Romans  awakened  a  deeper  resentment 
for  the  rude  upsetting  of  convictions  held  to  be  beyond  reach 
of  all  hostile  argument.  By  far  the  larger  portion  of  the 
speeches  of  the  accusers  is  taken  up  with  the  scrutiny  and 
censure  of  the  latter  work,  which  is  denounced  as  virtually 
leaving  scarcely  a  single  distinctively  Christian  doctrine 
unassailed,  and  as  practically  rejecting  most  of  them. 

One  fallacy  running  through  the  whole  of  these  speeches  is 
the  notion  that  their  comments  on  particular  doctrines  carry 
with  them  somehow  the  weight  of  authoritative  statements,  and 
that  their  statements  of  doctrine  are  such  as  must  be  binding 


1 86 1.         "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  129 


of  necessity  on  every  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England. 
With  an  uneasy  feeling  that  the  ground  here  was  unsafe  be- 
neath their  feet,  they  betray  their  anxiety  to  draw  out  that 
which  they  are  pleased  to  speak  of  as  the  doctrine  of  the 
Church  of  England  with  a  clearness  which  shall  render  further 
misconception  impossible,  and  bring  it  into  a  condition  not 
unlike  that  of  the  laws  of  the  Medes  and  Persians.  With 
such  a  state  of  mind  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had  no  sympathy 
whatever.  With  him  there  could  be  no  growth  without 
thought,  and  no  thought  without  growth  ;  and  when  once  he 
felt  that  the  search  for  truth  called  on  him  to  follow  out  a 
certain  track,  he  was  not  one  who  would  be  deterred  from 
taking  this  course  by  any  denunciations  of  men  who  insisted 
that  the  whole  truth  had  been  discovered  already.  He 
would  have  admitted,  and  he  did  admit,  that  some  of  the 
opinions  held  by  him  in  past  years  had  been  modified  ;  but 
he  insisted  not  less  strenuously  that  the  whole  Christian 
world,  nay,  the  whole  family  of  mankind,  are  all  undergoing  a 
training,  and  that  even  the  most  rigid  of  sacerdotal  systems 
may,  and  indeed  must,  mark  only  a  stage  in  the  religious 
education  of  the  world.  With  him  theological  terms  and 
phrases  were  valuable  only  as  pointing  to  eternal  realities  ; 
and  the  outward  sign  was  in  every  case  separable  from  the 
inward  gift. 

But  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  was  altogether  mistaken  when 
he  spoke  of  what  he  called  Dr.  Colenso's  revolt  against  the 
faith  of  Christendom  as  the  result  of  the  extreme  Calvinism 
in  which  he  had  been  trained.  He  was  wrong  as  to  the  fact. 
Dr.  Colenso's  earlier  letters  show  that  he  lived  in  an  atmo- 
sphere which  may  be  compared  to  that  of  the  "  Clapham 
Sect "  ;  but  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  at  any  time  held 
those  notions  of  election  and  reprobation  which  are,  perhaps 
not  unjustly,  regarded  as  the  distinctive  features  of  the 
theology  of  Calvin.     Looking  at  one  of  his  own   children  in 

VOL.  I.  K 


I30  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

the  innocence  of  her  infancy,  he  asked  a  friend  how  any  one 
looking  on  a  babe  could  be  a  Calvinist ;  and  the  mind  set  free 
to  work  on  the  thought  of  the  Divine  Love  as  embracing  all 
children,  as  such,  began  to  work  its  way  onwards  into  happier 
and  more  serene  conditions.  But  he  never  supposed  that  his 
Coinmentary  on  the  Romans^  any  more  than  any  other  of  his 
works,  was  weapon-proof;  and  it  is  more  than  possible  that 
he  would  have  modified  or  even  withdrawn  some  propositions 
on  which  he  lays  considerable  stress,  in  obedience  to  the 
pleadings  even  of  his  Capetown  accusers,  provided  that  these 
had  assured  to  him  at  starting  the  full  measure  of  justice  to 
which  every  Englishman  in  England  was,  and  is,  beyond  all 
question  entitled,  and  which  there  he  would  certainly  receive. 
No  one  was  more  ready  than  himself  to  allow  that  the  same 
truth  will  be  expressed  by  different  men  in  different  ages  in  a 
very  different  way,  and  therefore  that  the  language  of  such  a 
writer  as  St.  Paul  on  such  subjects  as  sacrifice,  redemption, 
justification,  should  not  be  put  forth  as  the  only  legitimate 
expression  of  belief  on  those  subjects.  In  later  years  he  felt  this 
more  forcibly :  and  most  assuredly  there  never  has  been  a  time 
in  which  it  has  been  more  needful  for  those  who  wrap  them- 
selves up  in  a  traditional  orthodoxy  to  face  the  fact  that  the 
religious  thought  of  the  age  does  not  adapt  itself  readily  to 
much  of  the  phraseology  current  in  the  early  centuries  of  the 
Christian  era.  But  his  great  contention  was  that  when  St.  Paul 
was  using  language  from  which  many  at  the  present  time  turn 
with  something  like  a  feeling  of  repulsion,  the  Apostle  was 
seeking  to  convey  a  meaning  the  very  opposite  to  that  which 
he  is  often  supposed  to  express,  and  that  to  those  whom  he 
addressed  he  succeeded  in  conveying  that  meaning. 

In  short,  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  was  for  him  a  living 
book,  the  utterance  of  a  living  man  dealing  with  actual  con- 
ditions of  thought  differing  indefinitely  from  our  own,  and 
seeking  to  lay  bare  errors  which  might  be  fatal,  and  to  remove 


i86i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  131 

perplexities  which  must  be  stumbling-blocks,  if  they  could 
not  be  swept  away.  I'rom  first  to  last,  therefore,  his  task 
might  bring  him  into  collision  with  the  prepossessions  of 
parties  or  schools  which  fancied  themselves  in  possession  of 
all  truth  ;  and  in  fact  it  did  so.  The  very  introduction  to  the 
book  brought  on  him  vehement  charges  of  heresy,  because  he 
presumed  to  ask  who  and  what  the  people  might  be  whom 
St.  Paul  was  addressing.  In  the  eyes  of  the  Capetown 
accusers  there  could  be  no  question  at  all ;  and  so  long  as 
they  refrained  from  forcing  their  opinion  on  others,  they  were 
perfectly  fi-ee  so  to  think.  For  them  it  was  absolutely  certain 
that  St.  Paul  was  wTiting  to  men  whose  creed  was  much  the 
same  as  that  of  the  Nicene  Council,  and  who  might  be 
described  as  taking  much  the  same  view  of  things  with 
the  Bishop  of  Capetown.  But  the  Bishop  of  Natal  refused 
altogether  the  restraints  of  such  swaddling  bands.  The 
propositions  so  vehemently  put  forth  at  the  Capetown  trial  go 
far  towards  depriving  the  Epistle  of  all  force  and  meaning  ; 
and  in  England  every  clergyman  is  perfectly  free  to  say  so. 
It  will  be  a  terrible  and  monstrous  thing  if  this  liberty  should 
be  restrained  in  Southern  Africa,  and  if  any  changes  should 
occur  to  render  the  introduction  of  such  restrictions  possible 
in  England. 

In  truth,  the  condition  of  those  to  whom  St.  Paul  wrote  at 
Rome  is  of  the  first  importance,  if  we  wish  to  understand  his 
letter.  That  this  letter  was  sent  before  he  himself  set  foot  in 
Rome  no  one,  of  course,  will  doubt ;  and  if  we  give  any  credit 
to  the  narratives  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  it  is  not  less 
certain,  as  the  Bishop  says,  that  when  he  reached  the  Eternal 
City,  a  Christian  Church,  in  any  precise  sense  of  the  words, 
had  no  existence  there.  There  were  heathen,  and  there  were 
believers.  The  latter  had  heard  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  and  felt 
no  decided  antagonism  towards  it,  and  no  prejudice  against  the 
Apostle  when  he  styled  himself  His  bondman.    The  Christian 

K  2 


132  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

leaven  was  working  in  the  Jewish  society  at  Rome  ;  but  it 
had  not  yet  resolved  itself  into  a  force  opposed  to  ordinar}- 
Jewish  tradition.  As  in  the  Epistle,  so  later  when  he  appears 
among  them  in  person,  he  addresses  himself  directly  to  Jews, 
and  tells  them  that  he  has  come  on  an  errand  which  concerns 
"  the  hope  of  Israel."  By  them  in  turn  he  is  requested  to  sa}' 
what  he  thinks,  because  they  know  that  the  party  which  laid 
special  claim  to  Christian  discipleship  was  a  sect  everywhere 
spoken  against.  "  In  other  words,  they  had  evidently  no 
knowledge  of  a  Christian  Church  existing  in  their  very  midst 
at  Rome."  Undoubtedly  in  St.  Paul's  eyes  they  were  all 
"  called  ones  of  Jesus  Christ "  ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that 
all  who  are  called  obey  the  calling,  and  at  the  same  time  we 
need  not  suppose  that  any  purposely  or  deliberately  made 
light  of  it.  In  a  certain  sense  he  could  address  all  as  Jews, 
and  all  as  Christians,  and  have  intercourse  with  them  on  the 
same  footing  of  friendship  as  with  Aquila  and  Priscilla  at 
Corinth.     These  were  Jews,  but  Jews  seemingly 

"  with  a  strong  tendency  to  Christianity,  which  St.  Paul  him- 
self, by  his  long  and  close  intercourse  with  them,  was  the 
means  under  God  of  fostering  into  a  downright,  earnest, 
genuine  profession  of  the  Christian  faith." 

But  the  language  of  the  greater  part  of  the  Epistle  is  itself 
conclusive.     It 

"  assumes  in  the  reader  a  very  familiar  acquaintance  with 
Jewish  history,  and  Jewish  practices,  and  Jewish  modes  of 
thought,  such  as  no  mere  ordinary  convert  from  heathenism, 
especially  at  a  time  when  there  were  only  manuscripts,  and 
the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  were  not  in  every  one's 
hands,  could  possibly  have  possessed.  St.  Paul  passes 
rapidly  from  one  point  to  another,  as  if  sure  of  carrying 
his  readers  along  with  him,  without  stopping  for  a  moment 
to  explain  more  clearly  to  the  Roman  mind  any  one  of  his 


1 86 1.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  133 

allusions.  The  Jew's  '  resting  in  the  Law,'  his  making  his 
boast  in  God,  his  confidence  in  circumcision,  the  story  of 
Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob  in  some  of  its  minuter  details, 
the  destruction  of  Pharaoh,  extracts  from  the  Psalms  and 
the  Prophets, — all  these  are  brought  in  when  the  arguments 
require  it,  without  any  doubt  seeming  to  cross  his  mind  as 
to  the  possibility  of  his  illustrations  being  unintelligible, 
and  his  reasoning  failing  to  take  effect,  because  of  any  want 
of  acquaintance,  on  the  part  of  those  to  whom  he  wrote, 
with  the  main  facts  of  Jewish  history."  ^ 

At  once,  then,  a  flood  of  light  is  thrown  on  the  argument 
and  purpose  of  the  letter.  The  condition  of  thought  here 
treated  of  may  seem  unreal  or  extravagant  to  us  ;  and  in 
truth,  with  all  the  faults  of  which  we  may  be  conscious  or 
guilty,  it  is  not  easy  for  Englishmen  generally  to  throw  them- 
selves into  the  temper  of  a  Pharisee  of  the  Pharisees.  If  we 
had  not  before  us  the  Calvinistic  theology,  we  might  find  it 
hard  to  convince  ourselves  that  the  theories  of  particular 
election  and  partial  salvation  could  be  entertained  by  any ; 
that  any  could  look  on  themselves  as  having  an  indefeasible 
title  to  mercies  and  blessings  denied  to  others,  and  calmly 
look  forward  to  their  own  beatification  at  the  cost  of  the 
rejection  and  ruin  of  all  mankind  beside.  We  read  of  satis- 
faction in  work  done,  rather  than  of  striving  after  a  life  of 
love,  of  a  supercilious  contempt  of  those  who  were  not  within 
their  own  charmed  circle  of  covenant  and  privilege;  and  we 
are  tempted  to  think  that  we  are  looking  on  an  imaginary 
picture  rather  than  on  a  sad  reality.  The  abominations  of 
Genevan  theology  ma}'  surely  serve  to  dispel  such  a  delusion, 
and  in  any  case  the  very  existence  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  is  proof  that  St.  Paul  had  to  deal  with  such  a  state 
of  feeling,  unless  we  suppose  that  his  description  is  altogether 
of  his  own  devising. 

'  Cojiiinctifnry,  p.  2. 


134 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 


But  the  title-page  of  the  Bishop's  work  Instated  especially 
that  the  Epistle  was  here  explained  from  a  missionary  point 
of  view ;  ■  and  in  many  quarters  the  announcement  was  re- 
ceived with  a  sneer  as  being  little  better  than  a  pretence  or  a 
mockery.  The  book,  it  was  averred,  contained  no  instruction 
for  a  missionary,  and  would  only  fill  his  head  with  heresies 
destructive  to  every  article  of  the  Christian  faith.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  no  one  who  looks  through  even  half  the 
volume  with  moderate  care  can  fail  to  see  that  the  instruction 
of  missionaries  was  uppermost  in  his  thought.  He  looked  on 
them  as  messengers  to  those  who  were  sitting  in  darkness  and 
the  shadow  of  death,  and  the  question  which  he  had  to  answer 
was,  What  is  the  message  with  which  they  were  charged  ? 
Without  moving  a  step  in  the  inquiry,  he  was  quite  sure  that 
the  message  must  be  one  of  good  tidings — in  very  truth,  a 
gospel,  and  that  if  it  were  not  such,  it  must  in  the  long  run 
fail.  He  did  not  mean  to  deny  that  appeals  to  men's  fears 
and  pictures  of  arbitrary  retribution  might  make  an  impres- 
sion for  a  time,  or  that  a  message  of  good  though  in  some 
degree  perverted  or  abused  might  yet  work  in  some  measure 
for  the  welfare  of  mankind. 

Of  this  the  history  of  Christianity  furnished  abundant  proof. 
But  he  held  that  far  more  than  this  was  needed,  if  the  grace 
of  God  was  not  to  be  hindered.  It  was  indispensable  that 
the  whole  counsel  of  God  should  be  made  known,  and  he 
believed  that  this  counsel  was  nowhere  more  vividly  set  forth 
than  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  This  Epistle  dealt  the 
death-blow  to  all  notions  of  covenant  and  privilege,  to  every 
theory  which  substituted  anything  in  the  place  of  that  one 
thing  with  which  alone  the  righteous  Father  and  Judge  of 
men  could  be  satisfied.  It  maintained  that  His  justice,  His 
mercy,  and  His  love  were  alike  unchangeable  and  unfailing  ; 
that  His  Will  was  absolutely  righteous,  and  that  it  must  work 
to  produce  righteousness,  in  all  beings  endowed  with  a  capacitjr 


i86i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS.''  135 

for  righteousness.  It  excluded  further  all  unworthy  thoughts 
of  God,  all  notions  which  ascribed  to  Him  either  partiality 
or  vindictiveness,  and  still  more  all  those  dreadful  ideas 
which  led  men  to  suppose  that  evil  would  be  left  to  itself  in 
any  part  of  the  Creation  by  a  deliberate  exercise  of  His 
Will. 

It  would  have  been  difficult,  therefore,  for  him  to  select 
a  task  bearing  more  directly  on  the  work  to  which  he  had 
given  himself;  and  it  had  filled  his  thoughts  from  the  time  of 
his  consecration.  Nay,  before  his  consecration  his  letters  to 
Mr.  Ferguson  and  other  friends  show  that  even  then  his  mind 
had  long  been  working  in  this  direction.  There  are  still  some 
surviving  of  those  who  accompanied  him  to  the  Cape  at  the 
end  of  1853,  '^^'^^  these  will  remember  how  he  read  with  them 
this  Epistle  with  the  express  purpose  of  showing  how  its 
general  drift  and  teaching  had  been  misapprehended,  and  how 
St.  Paul's  language  had  been  perverted  into  a  sanction  for 
theological  formula;  from  which  he  would  have  shrunk  with 
horror.  But  he  held  that  its  true  meaning  could  be  seized 
only  by  bearing  strictly  in  mind  the  temper  and  condition  of 
those  whom  St.  Paul  was  addressing.  These  were,  above 
all  things,  convinced  that  God  was  a  respecter  of  persons,  and 
that  he  was  pledged  to  have  special  respect  to  the  descendants 
of  Abraham  after  the  flesh  ;  and  the  effort  of  the  Apostle 
from  first  to  last  was  to  convince  them  that  no  delusion  could 
be  more  thorough  and  more  fatal.  The  very  ke)'-words  of  the 
whole  letter  were  heard,  the  Bishop  maintained,  in  the  first 
chapter,  when  he  declared  that  the  power  of  God  was  unto 
salvation  to  every  one  who  believed  ;  the  three  points  involved 
in  this  assertion  being  :  (i.)  that  salvation  is  wholly  of  God, 
wrought  by  His  power,  bestowed  by  his  love,  of  His  own  free 
grace  in  the  Gospel,  and  therefore  to  be  meekly  and  thankfull)' 
received  as  His  gift,  not  arrogantl)-  claimed  as  a  matter  of 
right  ;  (ii.)  that  it  is  meant   for  Jew  and  Gentile  alike,  for  all 


136  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  iv. 

that  believe  ;  (iii.)  that  it  is  to  be  received  by  faith  alone,  by 
simply  taking  God  at  His  word,  not  to  be  sought  by  a  round 
of  ceremonial  observances  or  acts  of  legal  obedience.^  The 
Gospel  then  was  the  setting  forth  of  the  righteousness  of  God, 
that  is,  the  righteousness  or  state  of  righteousness,  which  God 
gives  graciously  to  man,  as  He  gave  to  Abraham  when  He 
called  him  righteous  who  himself  was  unrighteous,  when  He 
counted  his  faith  to  him  for  righteousness.^ 

But  all  have  sinned,  and  all  are  daily  sinning,  and  come 
short  of  God's  glory ;  and  all  are,  on  the  other  hand,  made 
righteous,  justified  freely  by  the  grace  of  God. 

"In  former  days,"  he  asserts,  "  the  Jews  were  all  '  made 
righteous,'"  treated  as  righteous,  though  many  of  them  in- 
dividually were  unfaithful.  They  were  all  embraced  in 
God's  favour,  and  dealt  with  as  children,  not  for  any  works 
of  righteousness  which  they  had  done,  nor  for  any  virtue 
which  they  possessed  in  themselves  as  descendants  of 
Abraham,  but  because  of  God's  free  grace."  ^ 

But  the  gift  is  now  bestowed  upon  all  who 

"  will  be  content  to  be  righteous  in  His  sight,  not  for  any 
worthiness  of  their  own,  or  any  peculiar  claim  they  may 
fancy  themselves  to  have  upon  His  favour,  but  simply  be- 
cause He  is  graciously  pleased  to  call  them  righteous,  to 
account  them  as  righteous  creatures,  for  the  sake  of  His 
own  dear  Son,  whom  He  has  given  to  be  their  Head  and 
King."  * 

It  is  obvious  that  for  those  who  do  not  take  the  Pharisaic 
position  these  arguments  and  appeals  lose  their  direct  force. 
But  St.  Paul  was  writing  to  those  who  did  intrench  them- 
selves within  these  barriers  ;  and  to  them  his  words  came 
with    irresistible  power.      Where   the    man    is   bowed    down 

^  Comjnenfary,  P-  33-  ^  lb.  p.  36. 

3  lb.  p.  85.  ■*  lb.  p.  245. 


J 

1861.  ''THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  137 

simply  with  the  sense  of  sin,  where  he  despairs  of  his  power 
of  growth  in  goodness,  where  the  thought  of  covenant  or 
privilege  never  enters  his  mind,  where  his  one  prayer  is  that 
he  may  be  set  free  from  the  evil  within  him,  the  pleadings 
of  St.  Paul  to  these  Christianising  Jews  must  be,  to  say  the 
least,  superfluous.  To  man}'  at  the  present  day  thc\'  may 
seem  unintelligible.  In  such  there  is  a  strong  impulse  to  say 
that  they  have  no  wish  to  be  counted  or  to  be  reckoned  to  be 
anything  but  what  they  are,  that  they  have  no  desire  to  be 
labelled  as  good  when  the\'  are  not  good  ;  and  this  feeling, 
there  is  no  doubt,  is  a  natural  reaction  against  the  language  of 
theologians  like  Martin  Luther.  Emphatic  protests  have  been 
made  against  the  notions 

"that  the  scheme  of  salvation  should  be  one  of  names  and 
understandings  ;  that  we  should  be  said  to  be  just,  said  to 
have  a  righteousness,  said  to  please  God,  said  to  earn  a 
reward,  said  to  be  saved  by  works  ;  that  the  great  disease 
of  our  nature  should  remain  unstaunched  ;  that  Adam's 
old  sinfulness  should  so  pervade  the  regenerate  that  they 
can  do  nothing  in  itself  good  and  acceptable,  even  when  it 
is  sprinkled  with  Christ's  blood."  ^ 

But  even  thus  the  seeming  verbalism  is  not  entirely  ex- 
cluded. The  counting  or  reckoning  is  said  to  apply  to  that 
state  or  time  which  has  Tprecedcd  conversion,  and  with 
reference  to  this  state  we  arc  told  that 

"God  treats  us  as  //"that  had  not  been  which  has  been  ;  that 
is,  by  a  merciful  cconom}-  or  representation,  He  says  of  us, 
as  to  the  past,  what  in  fact  is  otherwise  :  " — 

the  formal  statement  assuming  this  shape,  that 
"our  formal  justification  is  not  a  mere  declaration  of  a  past 
fact,  or  a  tcstimon}'  to  what  is  present,  or  an  announcement 
of  what  is  to  come,  ....  but  it  is  the  cause  of  that  being 
which  before  was  not,  and  henceforth  is."  - 

^  Newman,  Lectures  on  Justification,  p.  62.  -  Ih.  p.  S6. 


138  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap,  iv. 

It  is  not  easy  for  those  who  do  not  care  to  entangle  them- 
selves in  theological  technicalities  to  see  how  this  language 
differs  from  that  of  St.  Paul.  It  does  not,  probably,  differ  at 
all.;  but,  if  so,  the  same  harmony  must  be  claimed  for  the 
words  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  Here  also  there  is  the  distinct 
assertion  that  God  looks  on  all  men  as  His  children,  though 
they  may  be  disobedient,  and  that  the  work  of  His  Spirit  is 
to  make  them  so  in  truth.  But  in  the  Bishop,  as  in  St.  Paul, 
there  is  the  further  faith  that  it  is  His  will  to  cast  out  the 
evil  from  all,  and  that  that  which  He  wills  He  is  able  to 
accomplish. 

Nor  is  this  all.  In  all  these  arguments  the  purpose  of  St. 
Paul  was  to  throw  down,  to  cast  to  the  winds,  all  confidence 
resting  in  and  grounded  on  what  he  called  the  works  of  the 
law.  This  word  "  law  "  is  not  the  only  one  which  St.  Paul^ 
with  other  writers  in  the  New  Testament,  uses  in  more  than 
one  definite  sense.  The  same  remark  applies  to  death,  life, 
and  other  terms.  But  it  is  specially  necessary  to  note  the 
mode  by  which  the  law,  which  he  regards  as  a  burden  con- 
vincing men  of  sin,  was  received.  Moses  is  the  mediator,  the 
one  b}'  whom  it  is  promulgated  to  the  Israelites  :  it  comes  to 
him  through  angels  of  whom  he  seems  to  speak  as  the  prin- 
cipalities and  powers  of  the  Kosmos  ;  and  hence  that  which  is 
received  from  them  is  a  bondage  to  which  he  deplores  that 
the  Galatians  should  allow  themselves  to  be  subjected.^  It 
would  seem  that  he  has  these  beings  in  his  mind  when  he 
warns  the  Galatians  against  himself  or  an  angel  who  should 
dare  to  preach  any  other  Gospel  than  that  which  had  been 
preached  to  them.^  When,  therefore,  he  speaks  of  the  in- 
tolerable yoke,  he  is  speaking  not  of  the  living  and  life-giving 

1  Gal.  iv.  3,  8.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  word  oroixeta  is  here 
used  in  the  sense  which  it  bears  in  modern  Greek.  Cf.  Eph.  iii.  lo, 
vi.  12  ;  Col.  i,  13,  14. 

-  Gal.  i.  8. 


i86i.  ''THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  139 

law  in  which  the  Psalmists  found  their  joy,  and  rest,  and 
peace,  but  of  the  organised  Mosaic  law — the  system  of  rites, 
ordinances,  ceremonies,  outward  offerings — the  most  potent 
engine  ever  invented  for  the  oppression  of  the  human  spirit. 
It  is  this  law,  the  curse  of  which  is  said  to  pass  on  Jesus 
Christ ;  ^  it  is  the  wrath  of  this  law,  from  which  the  Apostle 
tells  the  Thessalonians  ^  that  Jesus  is  delivering  them, — not 
the  wrath  of  God,  for  he  insists  in  the  same  letter  that  the 
appointment  of  God  is  not  to  wrath,  but  to  the  deliverance 
which  shall  make  them  sound  and  strong.^  All  his  writings, 
in  short,  point  to  the  one  conclusion  that  the  shattering  of 
this  yoke,  and  the  dispersion  of  the  monstrous  errors  which 
had  grown  up  under  its  shadow,  were  the  objects  nearest  to 
his  heart  ;  and  this,  of  itself,  would  be  enough  to  show  that 
the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  could  not  really  be  animated  by 
the  terrible  spirit  of  modern  Calvinism. 

This  spirit,  the  Bishop  insists,  is  conspicuously  absent  from 
all  those  passages  which  are  regarded  as  its  strongholds. 
Among  the  foremost  of  these  is  the  sentence  in  which  St. 
Paul  speaks  of  the  potter's  power  of  forming  vessels  for 
honour  and  dishonour.  Shall  the  clay  say  to  him  that  is 
fashioning  it,  what  makest  thou  ?  was  a  question  put  long  ago 
by  Isaiah  ;  and  the  question  points  to  clay  still  soft  under  the 
potter's  hand,  which  can  be  moulded  afresh.  "  May  not  the 
Heavenly  Father,"  the  Bishop  adds,  as  drawing  out  the  meaning 
of  St.  Paul, 

"  deal  with  the  Jewish  nation  as  He  sees  fit,  fashioning  it  first, 
if  He  sees  good,  into  the  shape  of  a  vessel  designed  for  high 
and  honourable  use  in  his  service,and  then  if  He  sees  that 
the  vessel  is  marred  in  the  making,  and  will  not  answer  His 
purpose,  unmaking  it  with  a  stroke  of  His  hand,  and  out 
of  the  self-same  lump  making  another  vessel,  for  dishonour, 

1  Gal.  iii.  13.  '  i  Th.  i.  10.  ^1  Th.  v.  9. 


I40  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  iv. 

for  some  lower  use,  which  shall  answer  His  purpose  still, 
and  be  used  in  His  service,  though  in  another  less  honour- 
able way  ? " ^ 

That  this  is  the  true  meaning  of  the  passage  he  is  assured 
by  the  words  of  Jeremiah,  who  speaks  of  the  potter  as  making 
another  vessel  out  of  the  same  lump  of  clay  from  which  he 
had  shaped  one  that  had  been  marred  under  the  process.^ 

"  So  then,"  he  adds,  "  the  Great  Potter,  when  a  vessel  is 
marred  in  His  hand  in  the  making,  when  He  sees  that  a 
people,  or  a  Church,  or  an  individual,  will  not  answer  to  the 
end  for  which  He  fashioned  it,  will  make  it  into  another 
vessel  for  His  use,  as  it  seemeth  good  to  Him  to  make  it. 
He  will  not  cast  it  away,  but  re-fashion  it,  to  serve  for  a 
lower  and  less  honourable  use  in  His  Kingdom.  '  And  so,' 
says  the  Apostle,  '  may  it  now  be  with  you.  You  were 
fashioned,  indeed,  to  be  a  vessel  unto  honour  ;  Israel  was 
to  be  the  light,  and  Jerusalem  the  joy,  of  the  whole  earth. 
But  the  Potter  may  see  that  you  have  become  marred  in 
His  hand  in  the  making.  He  may  even  now  be  fashioning 
you  into  another  vessel,  a  vessel  still  for  His  own  use,  but 
for  a  lower  purpose,  that  even  by  the  loss  of  those  high 
privileges  which  you  have  hitherto  enjoyed,  by  being  de- 
prived of  that  glory  for  which  He  designed  you,  and 
portions  of  which  have  already  been  vouchsafed  to  you, 
you  may  serve  His  great  ends,  as  a  witness  and  a  warning 
to  others  until  the  time  of  mercy  shall  come  again  for  you, 
and  the  clay  be  once  more  taken  in  the  Father's  hand,  and 
fashioned  anew  at  His  will." 

He  thus  regards  it  as  "indisputable"  that  St.  Paul  is  not 
arguing  that  the  Potter  has  power  to  make  out  of  the  same 
lump,  at  the  same  time,  two  vessels,  at  His  own  arbitrary  will,  one 
for  honour,  and  the  other  for  dishonour  (so  as  to  support  the 

1  Commentary,  p.  240.  -  Jeremiah  xviii.  3-6. 


iS6i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  141 


Calvinistic  view).^  The  idea  of  such  arbitrary  action  was  for 
him  rather  unmeaning  than  merely  repulsive.  It  is  absurd,  as 
well  as  abominable,  to  ascribe  to  God  anything  which  savours 
of  chance  or  caprice  ;  and  when  St.  Paul  declares  that  God 
has  mercy  on  those  on  whom  He  wills  to  have  mercy,  while 
whom  He  wills  He  hardens,  he  insists  that  this  blessing  or 
this  judgement  goes  forth  "  not  by  any  mere  arbitrary  pro- 
ceeding but  by  an  unerring   law  of  righteousness." 

"  Where  He  sees  a  faithful  humble  soul,  following  the  light 
already  given,  ....  there  He  wills  to  pour  out  His  mere}-. 
And  w^here  on  the  other  hand  He  sees,  as  He  alone  can  see, 
that  there  is  a  root  of  evil  within  the  heart,  .  .  .  there  He 
wills  to  pour  out  His  judgement.     And  what  will  the  mercy 

.  be .''  Increase  of  grace  to  those  that  are  in  grace,  the 
softening  and  subduing,  the  cleansing  and  purifying,  of  the 
heart,  while  it  grows  in  the  tempers  which  become  the 
children  of  God.  And  what  will  the  judgement  be .''  The 
loss  of  that  grace  already  received,  the  hardening  and 
deadening  of  the  heart,  which  is  the  natural  and  necessar}^ 
consequence  of  indulged  evil,  just  as  the  growth  in  grace 
is  the  natural  and  necessary  consequence  of  obedience."  ^ 

But  if  it  is  needful  to  note  carefully  the  passages  in  which 
St.  Paul  uses  the  word  Imv,  there  is  even  more  need  to  watch 
his  use  of  the  terms  life  and  death,  and  especially  so  when  he 
speaks  of  the  life  and  death  of  Christ.  Some  passages  in  the 
Commentary,  in  which  the  Bishop  dwells  on  this  subject,  were 
objected  to  in  the  so-called  Capetown  trial  for  reasons  which 
it  is  not  altogether  easy  to  understand  ;  but  although  these 
objections  are  worth  nothing,  it  must  probably  be  admitted 
that  his  language  might  be  more  exact.  Thus,  of  that  event, 
or  incident,  which  we  call  the  death  of  the  body,  he  speaks  as 
being  to  Christians  "  no  longer  a  token  of  the  curse  K'ing 
heavily  upon  us,"  and  "   no  longer  a  woe  inflicted  on  us  b\' 

'  Commentary,  p.  241.  ^  lb.  p.  238. 


142  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 


the  tyrant  sin."  But  from  first  to  last,  in  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  New,  there  is  not  a  word  to  warrant  the  supposition 
that  it  was  such  a  curse,  or  was  even  caused  or  introduced  by 
sin  at  all ;  and  most  certainly  we  have  no  other  authority  for 
so  thinking.  There  is  absolutely  no  room  for  the  inference  that 
the  physical  constitution  of  man  has  been  changed,  and  that 
the  machine  which  now  wears  out  was  made  at  the  outset 
capable  of  resisting  all  wear  and  tear.  All  the  evidence  at 
our  command  shows  that  wherever  on  this  planet  there  has 
been  physical  life,  there  has  been  that  which  we  call  physical 
death.  Death,  then,  is  a  term  which  may  have  for  us  three 
meanings.  It  may  denote  :  (i)  the  change  or  incident  which 
involves  or  brings  about  the  dissolution  of  the  outward  and 
palpable  form — a  change  of  which,  in  Bishop  Butler's  words, 
we  know  nothing  beyond  some  of  its  phenomena  ;  (2)  the 
consequences  of  disobedience,  the  death  which  is  the  wages  of 
sin,  the  death  of  sin  ;  (3)  the  death  to  sin,  the  total  rejection, 
the  absolute  renunciation  of  all  sin,  of  the  very  principle  of 
disobedience  and  selfishness. 

It  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  keep  these  distinctions 
clearly  before  us,  because,  if  they  are  lost,  a  mist  is  thrown  not 
only  over  the  Pauline  Epistles  generally,  but  over  almost  every 
other  portion  of  the  New  Testament.  It  is  the  second  death 
(the  death  of  sin,  the  death  which  comes  of  disobedience)  which, 
in  St.  Paul's  words,  has  passed  upon  all  men,  because  all  have 
sinned.  It  is  this  death  of  which  he  says  that  all  die  in 
Adam  :  it  is  the  death  to  sin,  the  absolute  rejection  of  all  sin, 
of  which  he  says  that  in  Christ  all  shall  be  made  alive.  But 
this  death,  in  full  strictness  of  meaning,  none  that  have  sinned 
can  die.  It  is  the  work  only  of  One  who  is  absolutely  sinless  : 
it  is  the  death  of  the  Eternal  Son.  It  is  the  death  which  He 
died  once  for  all,^  because  it  is  an  eternal  renunciation  of  all 
disobedience.  His  whole  life,  therefore,  is  this  death,  and  this 
^  ecpciTra^,  Rom.  vi.  lo. 


i86i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  143 


death  is  also  His  life.  We  may  speak  of  the  consummation 
of  His  sacrifice,  of  His  sanctification  (or  making  holy)  of 
Himself  on  Calvary  ;  but  Ave  cannot  speak  of  this  His  death 
as  belonging  only  to  the  closing  scene  of  His  earthly  ministr}^, 
because,  if  He  did  not  till  then  die  to  sin,  then  up  to  that  time 
He  must  have  been  under  the  influence  of  it.  The  statement 
is,  indeed,  self-contradictory ;  but  if  we  bear  in  mind  that  the 
death  to  sin  is  in  all  strictness  the  death  of  Christ  alone,  and 
that,  because  He  dies  this  death,  we  are  also  partakers  of  it  in 
the  measure  in  which  we  offer  ourselves,  as  a  reasonable,  holy, 
and  lively  sacrifice,  to  God,  the  language  of  St.  Paul  will  become 
to  us,  as  a  whole,  luminously  clear.  We  shall,  indeed,  utterly 
mistake  his  meaning,  and  do  him  a  great  wrong,  if  we  regard 
him  as  oppressed  by  any  other  death  than  the  death  of  sin, 
or  as  rejoicing  in  anything  but  that  death  to  sin  which  is  the 
full,  perfect,  and  sufficient  sacrifice,  oblation,  and  satisfaction 
for  the  sins  of  the  whole  Kosmos.  This  death  to  sin  is  the 
life  of  Christ :  it  is  His  resurrection.  In  that  He  died.  He 
died  unto  sin  once  for  all ;  in  that  He  liveth,  He  liveth  unto 
God,  So  reckon  ye  yourselves  to  be  dead  unto  sin,  but  alive 
unto  God  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord. 

When,  however,  we  look  to  the  Bishop's  language  on  the 
subject  of  the  death  of  Christ,  the  use  made  of  it  by  his 
accusers  at  Capetown  becomes  indeed  amazing.  The  onl)' 
real  objection  to  his  language  is  that  it  employs  terms  not  all 
of  which  seem  accurately  defined.     Thus  he  says  : — 

"Though  all  men  are  redeemed  and  belong  ...  to  Christ, 
and  are  even  now  under  His  care  and  government,  though 
they  may  not  yet  be  blessed  to  know  His  Name,  yet  to  its, 
Christians,  the  Apostle  says,  God  set  forth  His  Son  as  a 
propitiation  through  faith  in  His  blood.  We  are  privileged 
to  know  the  great  mystery  of  Godliness,  to  know  in  what 
way,  through  the  wisdom  of  God,  we  have  been  redeemed 
from  the  power  of  evil,  to  look  at  Christ  Jesus  through  faith 


144  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

in  His  blood,  and  behold  in  Him  the  propitiation  for  our 
sins,  the  object  which  makes  us,  the  whole  human  race,  of 
which  He  is  the  Head,  acceptable  to  God."  ^ 

So  again,  summing  up  the  Apostle's  argument,  he  adds  : — 

"  You  see,  after  all,  God  is  righteous.  He  is  faithful  in  respect 
of  His  promises  made  of  old  to  you  and  to  your  race.  He 
has  now,  by  the  setting  forth  of  His  Son,  explained  what 
His  dealings  of  old  with  you  meant,  how  He  tJien  regarded 
you  as  righteous,  called  you  righteous, — not  for  any  merits 
of  your  own,  or  your  forefathers,  but  for  His  own  mercy's 
sake, — in  Him  in  whom  He  loved  you,  and  not  you  only  but 
all  mankind,  from  before  the  foundation  of  the  world.  It 
was  in  His  Son,  the  second  Head  of  the  family  of  man,  in 
due  time  to  be  revealed,  that  He  loved  you  then,  and  not  for 
anything  in  your  forefathers.  All  the  righteousness  which 
He  gave  to  them,  He  gave  through  Him.  All  the  goodness 
which  He  saw  in  them.  He  saw  through  Him,  from  whom 
alone  it  came  to  them,  in  whom  it  existed  pure  and 
perfect  and  undefiled  with  the  consequences  of  the  Fall."  ^ 

If  we  ask  here  what  is  meant  by  blood  and  blood-shedding, 
we  do  not  learn  much  by  turning  to  the  passage  from 
Dr.  Vaughan,  quoted  by  the  Bishop,  that  the  death  of  Christ 
was  the  central  and  completive  act  of  the  whole  work  of 
redemption,  because  the  words  do  not  show  in  what  sense  the 
term  death  is  here  used.  It  is  to  be  regretted,  perhaps,  that 
the  word  should  ever  be  used  without  explanation,  for  the 
meaning  commonly  attached  to  it  resolves  itself  into  a 
revolting  superstition.  Dean  Stanley's  language  leaves  no 
room  for  misapprehension  ;  and  on  this  language  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  lay  too  great  a  stress. 

'  Looking  at  the  Bible  only,"  he  says,  "  and  taking  the  Bible 
as  a  whole,  .  .  ,  we  cannot  go  far  astray  in  adopting  the 

1  Commentary,  P-  9i-  '^  lb.  p.  94. 


i85i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS''  14: 


only  definition  of  the  blood  of  Christ  which  has  come  down 
to  us  from  primitive  times.  It  is  contained  in  one  of  the 
three  undisputed,  or  at  any  rate  least  disputed,  Epistles  of 
Ignatius  of  Antioch.  '  The  blood  of  Christ,'  he  said,  *  is  love 
or  charity.'  With  this  unquestionably  agrees  the  language 
of  the  New  Testament  as  to  the  essential  characteristic  of 
God  and  of  Christ.  Love,  unselfish  love,  is  there  spoken  of 
again  and  again  as  the  fundamental  essence  of  the  highest 
life  of  God  ;  and  it  is  also  evident  on  the  face  of  the 
Gospels  that  it  is  the  fundamental  motive  and  character- 
istic of  the  life  and  death  of  Christ.  It  is  this  love  stronger 
than  death,  this  love  manifesting  itself  in  death,  this  love 
willing  to  spend  itself  for  others,  that  is  the  blood  of  the 
life  in  which  God  is  well  pleased.  Not  the  pain  or  torture 
of  the  cross— for  that  was  alike  odious  to  God  and  useless 
to  man — but  the  love,  the  self-devotion,  the  generosity,  the 
magnanimity,  the  forgiveness,  the  toleration,  the  compassion, 
of  which  that  blood  was  the  expression,  and  of  which  that 
life  and  death  were  the  fulfilment.  '  Non  sanguine  sed 
pietate  placatur  Deus  '  is  the  maxim  of  more  than  one  of 
the  Fathers.  '  What  is  the  blood  of  Christ  .-* '  asked 
Livingstone  of  his  own  solitary  soul  in  the  last  moments  of 
his  African  wanderings.  '  It  is  Himself  It  is  the  inherent 
and  everlasting  mercy  of  God  made  apparent  to  human 
eyes  and  ears.'  The  charity  of  God  to  man,  the  charity  of 
men  to  one  another  with  all  its  endless  consequences, — if  it 
be  not  this,  what  is  it  .''  .  .  .  It  is,  therefore,  not  onl\-  from 
Calvary,  but  from  Bethlehem  and  Nazareth  and  Capernaum 
— not  only  from  the  crucifixion  but  from  all  His  acts  of 
mercy  and  words  of  wisdom — that  the  '  blood  of  Christ ' 
derives  its  moral  significance."^ 

It  is  true  that  Ignatius  gives  the  explanation  of  the  phrase 
"  blood  of  Christ "  which  is  cited  by  Dean  Stanle}-.  The  fact 
is  in  the  highest  degree  significant,  and  it  is  of  vital  import- 
ance.    It  shows  that  the  true  spiritual  tradition   still  sur\-ivcd 

^  Clinsiian  Ltstitutions,  ch.  vi.  p.  119,  ed.  i. 
VOL.  I.  L 


146  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  iv. 

in  the  fossilising  process  which  was  going  on,  and  that  the 
work  of  St.  Paul  had  not  yet  come  to  naught.^  For,  in 
truth,  a  vast  gulf  separates  most  of  the  thought  and  language 
of  Ignatius  from  the  thought  and  language  of  St.  Paul's  letter 
to  the  Romans.  The  former  seems  to  iind  a  special  comfort 
in  the  fancy  that  "  the  ruler  of  this  world  was  deceived  by 
the  virginity  of  Mary,  and  her  childhood,  and  in  like  manner 
also  by  the  death  of  the  Lord."  Here  we  have  the  very 
petrifaction  of  the  spiritual  life,  a  state  of  thought  in 
which  forms  of  words  become  everything,  and  the  mind  can 
lay  hold  of  nothing  except  through  sensuous  signs.  It  is 
from  such  a  man  as  this  that  we  have  in  these  words  on  the 
blood  of  Christ  the  tokens  of  the  presence  of  a  quickening 
Spirit  ;  and  if  this  were  all  that  we  had  received  from  him, 
this  alone  might  have  intitled  him  to  the  lasting  gratitude 
of  Christendom.  The  question  answered  by  Ignatius,  and 
asked  again,  and  again  answered,  by  Livingstone,  will  be 
asked  now  with  greater  frequency  than  ever,  in  proportion  as 
men  come  to  feel  that  such  phrases  may  point  to  spiritual 
realities  or  may  be  reduced  to  the  state  of  mere  symbols.  On 
these  words  the  whole  Sacramental  system,  as  it  is  called,  is 
made  to  rest ;  but  for  those  who  wish  to  preserve  their  moral 
balance  all  that  is  needed  is  to  mark  the  parallelism  or 
equation  in  the  language  of  the  fourth  Gospel  with  the 
language  of  the  General  Epistle  which  bears  the  name  of 
John. 

Without  going  into  questions  relating  to  the  origin  or 
choice  of  these  symbols,  we  have  specially  to  note  their 
equivalents  in  language  which  addresses  itself  not  to  the 
outward  senses  but  directly  to  the  heart  of  men.  It  is  plain 
matter  of  fact  that  in  the  fourth  Gospel  the  idea  of  food  as 
indispensable  for  the  maintenance  of  life  leads  to  a  discourse 
on  bread  as  such  a  support,  and  this  in  its  turn  to  a  further 
^  See,  further,  Edinbi(?'gh  Review,  July  1886,  p.  135,  &c. 


I 


i86i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  147 

discourse  on  flesh  and  blood  as  symbols  of  the  closest  union 
with  the  Source  of  all  life,  the  conclusion  in  reference  to 
nourishment  being  that  "  except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of 
man  and  drink  his  blood  ye  have  no  life  in  you,"  and  with 
reference  to  union,  "  he  that  eateth  my  flesh  and  drinketh 
my  blood,  dwelleth  in  me  and  I  in  him."  For  these  phrases 
we  have  three  equations  in  the  General  Epistle  of  St.  John, 
the  first  being  that  "he  that  keepeth  His  commandment 
dwelleth  in  Him  and  He  in  him;"  the  second  that  "whoso 
shall  confess  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God,  God  dwelleth  in 
him  and  he  in  God;"  the  third  that  "he  that  dwelleth  in 
love  dwelleth  in  God  and  God  in  him."  Thus  we  have  the 
keeping  of  the  commandments,  the  confession  of  Jesus,  and 
the  dwelling  in  love,  set  forth  as  precise  equivalents  to  the 
eating  of  the  flesh  and  the  drinking  of  the  blood  of  Christ ; 
and  a  full  light  is  thus  thrown  on  what  we  may  speak  of  as 
the  sacrificial  language  of  St.  Paul  in  his  Epistles  to  the 
Romans  or  to  other  Churches.  We  may,  perhaps,  regret  that 
this  key  was  not  systematically  applied  to  it  by  the  Bishop  of 
Natal :  but  we  must  remember  that  the  application  of  this 
key  is  extremely  disliked,  and  even  the  existence  of  the  key 
denied,  by  adherents  whether  of  the  extreme  sacerdotal  or  of 
the  Calvinistic  schools,  while  the  non-theological  mind  is  too 
apt  to  think  that  the  interpretation  put  on  these  terms  by 
members  of  these  schools  must  be  right. 

The  Bishop,  however,  had  in  his  Commentary  on  tJie  Epistle 
to  the  Romans  a  special  work  to  do  :  and  this  work  was  the 
insisting  that  the  benefits  received  from  and  through  Christ 
were  benefits  received  for  all  the  world.  The  Divine  work 
was  a  work  for  the  extinction  of  sin,  not  mercl)'  for  its 
punishment  ;  and  any  theories  or  doctrines  which  represented 
God  as  resting  content  with  the  infliction  of  penalties  must 
be  resolutely  encountered  and  put  down.  He  argues,  it  is 
true,  from   the  language  of  hope  to  the  reality  of  the  great 

L  2 


148  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

consummation  ;  but  he  does  so  because  the  language  of  St. 
Paul  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  seemed  to  him  to  point 
rather  to  hope  than  to  assurance.  We  may,  perhaps,  see  reason 
for  thinking  that  the  Bishop's  words  might  have  been  stronger 
than  they  were  ;  but  that  they  are  not  stronger  is  no  matter 
for  regret.  What  he  said  has  opened  the  way  for  greater 
clearness  of  thought  and  speech,  and  rendered  the  tyranny  of 
the  Westminster  Confession  and  of  all  other  like  utterances 
impossible  for  the  future.  For  him,  as  for  St,  Paul,  the 
earnest  longing  of  the  creature  pointed  to  the  final  manifes- 
tation of  the  sons  of  God  ;  and  if  the  creature  was  now 
subjected  to  wretchedness  or  vanity,  it  was  because  God 
Himself  had  subjected  it  to  this  wretchedness  in  hope  "that 
the  creature  itself  shall  be  set  free  from  the  bondage  of 
corruption  into  the  glorious  freedom  of  the  children  of  God." 
Indignation  and  wrath,  tribulation  and  anguish,  these  assuredly 
will  be  upon  every  soul  of  man  that  works  out  evil  ;  but  can 
we  say,  the  Bishop  asks,  with  these  words  of  St.  Paul  before  us, 

*'  that  such  chastisement,  however  severe,  may  not  be  remedial, 
may  not  be  intended  to  work  out  the  hope  under  which  the 
whole  race  has  been  subjected  to  vanity  ?  .  ,  ,  .  Is  there 
not  ground  from  this  text  as  well  as  others  for  trusting  that 
in  some  way  unknown  to  us  the  whole  race  shall  indeed  be 
made  to  share  this  hope  at  last .'' "  ^ 

Some,  perhaps,  may  see  here  the  influence  of  old  associations 
assigning  weight  to  the  sanction  of  special  texts  ;  but  such 
remarks  are  not  here  to  the  point.  We  are  concerned  with 
the  working  and  growth  of  the  Bishop's  own  mind  ;  and  the 
account  which  he  gives  of  this  growth  forms  one  of  the  most 
interesting  chapters  in  the  history  of  his  life.  He  now  dis- 
tinctly clung  to  and  rejoiced  in  the  hope,  or,  rather,  confident 
expectation,  expressed  by  St.  Paul.     But 


Commentary,  p.  196. 


I 


1 86 1.  '' THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS:'  149. 


"  there  was  a  time,"  he  says,  "  when  I  thought  and  wrote  other- 
wise. Some  years  ago — in  the  }'car  1853 — I  pubHshed  a 
small  volume  of  Village  Sennoiis,  which  I  dedicated  to  a 
dear  and  honoured  friend,  the  Rev.  ¥.  D.  Maurice,  and 
which  was  violently  attacked  in  consequence  of  this  dedi- 
cation,^ by  those  who  had  previously  assailed  Mr.  Maurice's 
teaching,  as  containing  what  seemed  to  them  erroneous 
statements  of  doctrine,  and,  particularly,  as  expressing 
agreement  with  Mr.  Maurice's  views  on  the  subject  of 
Eternal  Punishment.  I  was  able  to  show,  by  quotations 
from  my  little  book  itself,  that  these  charges  were  untrue, 
and  that  I  had  given  offence,  partly  by  stating  larger  views 
of  the  Redeeming  Love  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus  than  the 
reviewer  of  my  sermons  himself  thought  it  fit  to  hold 
(though  views  held  by  such  men  as  Barrow  and  Macknight), 
but  chiefly  by  expressing  my  cordial  sympathy  with  Mr. 
Maurice  in  his  noble  and  blessed  labours.  .  .  .  Accord- 
ingly in  the  preface  to  the  second  edition  of  his  Theological 
Essays,  Mr.  Maurice  spoke  of  me  as  '  having  proved  by  m)" 
sermons  that  I  believed  in  the  endlessness  of  future  punish- 
ments.' I  did  believe  in  that  dogma  at  the  time  I  wrote 
and  printed  those  sermons,  as  far  as  that  can  be  called 
belief  which,  in  fact,  was  no  more  than  acquiescence,  in 
common,  I  imagine,  with  very  many  of  my  brother  clerg}", 
in  the  ordinary  statements  of  the  subject,  without  having 
ever  deeply  studied  the  question,  probabh'  with  a  shrinking 
dread  of  examining,  and  without  having  even  ventured 
formall}'  to  write  or  preach  a  sermon  upon  the  subject,  and 
pursue  it,  in  thought  and  word,  to  all  its  consequences 
There  arc  many  who,  as  1  did  myself  in  those  da\-s,  woulc 
assert  the  dogma  as  part  of  their  '  Creed,'  and  now  and 
then,  in  a  single  sentence  of  a  sermon,  utter  a  few  words  in 
accordance  with  it,  but  who  have  never  set  themselves 
down  to  face  the  question  and  delix'cr  their  own  souls  upon 
it  to  their  flocks,  fully  and  unreservedly.  For  my  own  jiart, 
I  admit,  I  acquiesced  in  it,  seeing  souic  reasons  for  assuming 
it  to  be  true,  knowing  that  the  mass  of  my  clerical  brethren 

'  See  47. 


ISO  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

assented  to  it  with  myself,  and  contenting  myself  with 
making  some  reference  to  it,  now  and  then,  in  my  minis- 
trations, without  caring  to  dwell  deliberately  upon  it  and 
considering  what  might  be  urged  against  it. 
"  The  controversy  which  arose  about  Mr.  Maurice's  Essays 
and  my  own  little  volume  of  Sermons,  brought  the  whole 
subject  closely  before  me.  And  for  the  last  seven  years  I 
have  carefully  studied  it,  with  an  earnest  desire  to  know 
the  truth  of  God  upon  the  matter,  and  with  an  humble 
prayer  for  the  guidance  and  teaching  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in 
the  search  for  it.  I  now  declare  that  I  can  no  longer 
maintain,  or  give  utterance  to,  the  doctrine  of  the  endless- 
ness of  future  punishments, — that  I  dare  not  dogmatise  at 
all  on  the  matter, — that  I  can  only  lay  my  hand  upon  my 
mouth  and  leave  it  in  the  hands  of  the  righteous  and 
merciful  Judge.  But  I  see  that  the  word  eternal  does  not 
mean  endless,  and  for  such  reasons  as  the  following  I  enter- 
tain the  '  hidden  hope '  that  there  are  remedial  processes, 
when  this  life  is  ended,  of  which  at  present  we  know 
nothing,  but  which  the  Lord,  the  righteous  Judge,  will 
administer,  as  He  in  His  wisdom  shall  see  to  be  good."  ^ 

The  time  may  not  be  far  distant  when  most  or  all  of  these 
reasons  may  seem  trite  or  superfluous.  Some  of  them  may 
seem  so  already,  as  they  seemed  in  later  years  to  the  Bishop 
himself.  Religious  thought  has  made  great  strides  within 
the  last  thirty  years.  But  it  is  by  no  means  unnecessary  yet 
to  retrace  the  path  along  which  thinkers  like  Maurice  and 
Colenso  travelled.  The  old  superstition,  though  weakened 
and  circumscribed  in  its  teaching,  has  not  been  conquered  ; 
and  we  have  still  to  do  battle  in  many  quarters  with  notions 
which  more  than  all  others  are  barriers  in  the  way  of  the 
Divine  working.  His  reasons,  then,  were  (i)  that  Christians 
generally  believe  in  some  remedial  process  after  death,  a  small 
section  only  of  the  Church  universal  contending  that  the 
hour  of  dissolution  from  the  mortal  body  fixes  the  condition 
^  Commetitary,  p.  19S. 


i86i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  151 

of  the  man  for  ever  and  ever  ;  (2)  that  the  warning  of  the 
few  and  the  many  stripes  for  different  degrees  of  guilt  points 
in  the  same  direction,  for,  if  these  words  mean  anything  at  all, 
they  must  imply  gradations  of  punishment,  and  there  can  be 
no  gradations  of  endless,  infinite,  irremediable  woe. 

"  Can  the  punishment  in  any  sense  be  spoken  of  as  one  of 
feiv  stripes  where  the  unutterably  dreadful  doom  is  still 
assigned  of  endless  banishment  from  the  Presence  of  God 
and  all  beautiful  and  blessed  things  into  the  outer  darkness 
among  all  accursed  things,  where  not  one  single  ray  of 
Divine  Mercy  can  ever  enter  ?  It  seems  impossible.  The 
very  essence  of  such  perdition  is  utterly,  and  for  ever  and 
ever,  to  lose  sight  of  the  Blessed  Face  of  God.  If  it  be 
certain  that  never,  never,  in  the  infinite  endless  ages  to 
come  shall  one  ray  of  Divine  Light  shine  upon  the  gloom 
in  which  the  condemned  soul  is  plunged,  how  can  such 
a  state  be  described  as  one  of '  few  stripes,'  however  differ- 
ing from  that  of  another  soul,  by  the  pangs  of  bodily  pain 
being  less  acute,  or  even  (if  it  be  conceivable)  the  anguish 
of  mind  being  less  intense  }  " 

But  (3)  the  drawing  of  a  sharp  line  between  all  those  who 
shall  be  admitted  to  endless  blessedness  and  all  who  shall  be 
consigned  to  endless  woe  is  really  inconceivable.  The  shades 
of  difference  discriminating  the  moral  character  of  men  are 
infinite,  all  the  good  having  some  evil  in  them,  and  the  evil 
always  seeds  of  good. 

"Our  God  and  Father,  blessed  be  His  Name,  can  take  account 
of  all,  and  will  do  so,  and  judge  with  righteous  judgement 
accordingly.  But  where  can  the  line  be  drawn  between  the 
two  classes,  when  the  nearest  members  of  the  one  touch  so 
closely  upon  those  of  the  other  ?  In  point  of  fact,  how  many 
thoughtful  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  have  ever  de- 
liberately taught,  in  plain  out-spoken  terms,  this  doctrine  .-' 
How  many  of  the  more  intelligent  laity  or  clergy  do  really 
in  their  heart  of  hearts,  believe  it .-"  " 


152  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

There  is  (4)  the  further  question  whether  stripes  are  not 
needed 

"  even  for  many  of  those  who  yet,  as  we  humbly  trust,  shall 
be  suffered  to  enter  into  life,  whom,  at  all  events,  it  would 
be  a  fearful  and  horrible  thing  to  suppose  consigned  to 
everlasting  misery.  Are  there  not  many  Christians  to  be 
met  with  daily  in  the  common  intercourse  of  life,  persons 
whom,  in  the  main,  we  must  believe  to  be  sincere  in  their 
profession,  yet  whose  weak  and  imperfect  characters  often 
betray  them  into  faults  which  are  unworthy  of  the  Name 
they  bear }  Do  not  these  seem  to  need  some  cleansing 
process  after  death,  to  purify  their  souls  from  sin, — not  the 
sin  in  their  nature  only,  but  sin  too  often  allowed  and 
indulged  in  the  life  .''....  We  have  no  difficulty,  then,  in 
admitting  the  idea  of  a  remedial  process  for  soj?ie  after 
death.  But,  surely,  the  most  saintly  character,  when  viewed 
in  the  light  of  God's  holiness,  will  have  manifold  imper- 
fections, spots,  and  stains  which  he  himself  will  rejoice  to 
have  purged  away,  though  it  be  by  '  stripes,' — by  stripes  not 
given  in  anger  and  displeasure,  but  in  tenderest  love  and 
wisdom,  by  Him  who  dealeth  with  us  as  with  sons  .'' "  ^ 

Further,  (5),  all  analogy  teaches  us  to  expect  that  there  will 
be  growth  in  the  world  to  come  as  well  as  in  this. 

"  We  cannot  suppose  that  the  spirit  of  an  infant,  or  young 
child,  will  remain  always  in  the  undeveloped  state  in  which 
death  found  it  ;  nor  have  we  any  ground  whatever  to  think 
that  it  will,  suddenly  and  in  a  moment,  expand  at  once  in 
all  its  powers,  to  the  full  perfection  of  which  it  is  capable. 
Scripture  does  not  inform  us  on  the  subject  ;  analogy  is 
wholly  against  any  such  supposition.  In  all  nature  there  is 
no  instance  of  such  a  sudden  start  into  fulness  of  life,  of 
such  a  break  of  continuity  as  this  would  be.  And  would  it 
not  in  fact  contradict  the  very  idea  of  life  itself,  if  there 
were  to  be  no  such  growth  and  progress."  '^ 

^  Coj/imcnfary,  pp.  201,  202.  -  lb.  p.  205. 


iS6i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS:' 


But  (6)  this  growth,  which  we  feel  sure  must  await  some, 
furnishes  a  ground  for  beh'eving  that  it  will  go  on  in  all  ;  and 
(7)  we  must  not  forget  that  this  belief  attests  the  utterance  of 
the  Divine  Voice  in  our  hearts. 

"  Because  we  are  not  brute  creatures,  but  made  in  the  image 
of  our  God  and  Father,  .  .  .  because  we  have  that  within  us 
which  bears  relation  to  the  perfect  Righteousness  and  Truth 
and  Love  which  is  in  God, — therefore  it  is  that  we  recognise 
and  rejoice  in  the  full  revelation  of  those  perfections  in  our 
Lord's  own  life,  and  the  fainter  emanations  from  the  same 
blessed  Source  of  Light,  which  we  see  in  the  better  acts  of 
our  fellow  man,  or  which  we  may  be  enabled  to  manifest 
even  in  our  own  .  .  .  By  that  light  the  sayings  and  doings 
of  good  men,  the  acts  of  the  Church,  the  proceedings  and 
decisions  of  her  Fathers  and  Councils,  the  writings  of 
Prophets  and  Apostles,  the  words  recorded  to  have  been 
uttered  by  our  Blessed  Lord  Himself,  must  all  be  tried. 
'  We  must  try  the  spirits  whether  they  are  of  God.'  If  we 
are  required  on  the  supposed  authority  of  the  Church  or  of 
St.  Peter  or  St.  Paul  to  believe  that  which  contradicts  the 
law  of  righteousness  and  truth  and  love  which  God  with  the 
finger  of  His  Spirit  has  written  upon  our  hearts,  we  arc 
sure  that  there  must  be  error  somewhere.  .  .  The  voice  of 
that  inner  witness  is  closer  to  him  than  any  that  can  reach 
him  from  without,  and  ought  to  reign  supreme  in  his  whole 
being.  .  .  We  may  be  certain,  then,  that  any  interpretation 
of  Scripture  which  contradicts  that  sense  of  right  which  God 
Himself,  our  Father,  has  given  us,  to  be  a  witness  of  His 
own  perfect  excellences,  must  be  set  aside,  as  having  no 
right  to  crush  down,  as  with  an  iron  heel,  into  silence  the 
indignant  remonstrance  of  our  whole  spiritual  being.  And 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  such  a  remonstrance  .  .  . 
against  the  dogma,  as  usually  understood,  of  endless  punish- 
ment. This  dogma  makes  no  distinctions  between  those 
who  have  done  things  worthy  of  many  stripes  and  those 
who  have  done  things  worth)-  of  few, — between  the  profligate 
sensualist  and  the  ill-trained   child.  .  .   I  need   hardly  say 


154  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

that  the  whole  Epistle  to  the  Romans  is  one  of  the  strongest 
possible  protests  against  such  a  notion."  ^ 

On  this  point  the  Bishop  cites  from  his  Ten  Weeks  in 
Natal^  the  words  of  a  missionary  who,  having  enunciated 
this  doctrine  to  a  heathen  child,  is  asked  by  her  where  her 
parents  have  gone,  and  on  saying  that  their  destiny  was  the 
dark  place,  hears  her  despairing  cry,  "  Why  did  they  not  come 
and  tell  us  this  before  ?  "  He  cites,  as  still  more  horrible  and 
as  little  short  of  blasphemy,  the  following  prayer  printed 
for  the  use  of  a  missionary  institution  of  the  Church  of 
England  : — 

"  O  Eternal  God,  Creator  of  all  things,  mercifully  remember 
that  the  souls  of  unbelievers  are  the  work  of  Thy  hands, 
and  that  they  are  created  in  Thy  resemblance.  Behold,  O 
Lord,  hoiv  hell  is  filled  luitJi  them  to  the  dishonour  of  Thy 
Holy  Name.  Remember  that  Jesus  Christ,  Thy  Son,  for 
their  salvation,  suffered  a  most  cruel  death.  Permit  not,  we 
beseech  Thee,  that  He  should  be  despised  by  the  heathen 
around  us.  Vouchsafe  to  be  propitiated  by  the  prayers  of 
Thy  flock.  Thy  most  holy  Spouse,  and  call  to  mind  thine 
own  compassion." 

"  As  I  have  done  before,"  the  Bishop  adds,  "  so  do  I  now  set 
forward  these  passages,  to  enter,  in  the  name  of  God's 
Truth  and  God's  Love,  my  most  solemn  protest  against 
them,  as  utterly  contrary  to  the  whole  spirit  of  the  Gospel, 
.  .  .  and  operating  with  the  most  injurious  and  deadening 
effect  on  those  who  teach  and  on  those  who  are  taught." 

Yet  further,  (8),  the  persistent  language  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  New  on  the  subject  of  punishment  calls  for  explana- 
tion ;  and  by  this  dogma  of  endless  and  irremediable  woe  for 
all  who  undergo  any  condemnation  it  is  either  nullified  or 
converted  into  nonsense.  What  meaning  is  left  for  the  words 
that  even  Sodom  and   Gomorrha  shall    be  dealt   with   more 

^  Commentary,  p.  211. 
Pp.  252,  253.    Commentary  ott  Roma7tSj  p.  211.    See  also  pp.  55,  56. 


t86i.  ''THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS:'  155 

lightly  than  some  others  ?  or  for  the  promise,  given  emphati- 
cally by  Ezekiel,  xvi.  53,  55,  that  the  captivity  of  Sodom  and 
her  daughters  shall  be  brought  back  ?  What  force  is  there  in 
the  imagery  of  the  refining  fire,  of  the  fire  trying  every  man's 
work  and  separating  the  dross  from  the  pure  ore,  of  the 
worker  who  shall  be  saved,  made  sound  or  whole,  though 
with  loss,  because  his  rotten  work,  in  the  guise  of  wood, 
hay,  stubble,  shall   be   consumed  ? 

But  (9)  on  the  other  hand  the  retort  may  be  made.  Are 
there  not  other  passages,  which  plainly  imply  that  the  wicked 
shall  "  go  into  everlasting  fire,  prepared  for  the  devil  and  his 
angels, — to  the  place  w^here  their  worm  dies  not,  and  the  fire 
is  not  quenched  ?  " 

"  Certainly  there  are,"  the  Bishop  answers  ;  "  only  let  it  be 
remembered  that  the  word  '  endless '  is  not  a  proper  repre- 
sentation of  the  word  '  eternal '  or  '  everlasting ' — not  because 
it  says  too  much,  but  because  it  says  too  little.  '  Ever- 
lasting' implies  life,  permanence,  unchangeableness  ;  'end- 
less '  is  a  mere  empty  negative  and  explains  nothing  but 
that  the  object  is  without  an  end.  We  can  speak  of  the 
Everlasting  God  and  of  the  Living  God,  instead  of  saying 
the  Eternal  God  :  but  we  feel  at  once  how  empty  is  the 
formula,  if  we  speak  of  the  Endless,  or  the  Deathless,  Being. 
Surely,  there  is  an  Eternal,  or  Everlasting,  Fire — under- 
standing the  word  '  Fire,'  of  course,  not  literalh%  but  as  a 
figure,  to  represent  the  Divine  Anger  and  Displeasure — 
which  always  has  been  burning,  and  ever  will  be  burning, 
with  a  living,  permanent,  unchangeable  flame  against  all 
manner  of  evil,  so  long  as  there  is  evil  to  be  destroyed  by 
it.  While  evil  rules  in  a  man,  he  must  be  subject  to  that 
displeasure,  because  the  master  is,  whose  slave  the  man  is, 
whose  service  he  has  chosen.  It  is  so  in  this  life,  and  the 
man  is  conscious  of  it  at  times,  though  at  others  he  may 
beguile  away,  by  occupation,  business,  or  pleasure,  the 
burning  sense  of  that  displeasure.  But  the  time  will  surel)' 
come  when,  either  in  this  life,  it  may  be,  or  in   the  life  to 


156  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 


come,  it  will  be  revealed  fully, — that  Divine  Anger,  that 
Eternal  Fire,  which  is  burning  against  sin,  against  all 
wilful,  allowed  evil."  ^ 

The  notion  that  any  can  be  free  of,  or  can  shake  off,  the 
duty  of  examining  this  subject  and  sifting  it  thoroughly,  is 
absurd.  We  can  scarcely  say  that  it  is  less  the  duty  of  every 
one  in  this  country  than  of  those  who  leave  it  in  order  to 
teach  the  heathen.  But  the  Bishop  of  Natal  could  not  but 
feel  that  it  was  in  a  special  degree  incumbent  on  himself. 

"  Such  questions  as  these  have  been  brought  again  and  again 
before  my  mind  in  the  intimate  converse  which  I  have  had,  as 
a  missionary,  with  Christian  converts  and  heathens.  To  teach 
the  truths  of  our  holy  religion  to  intelligent  adult  natives,  who 
have  the  simplicity  of  children,  but,  withal,  the  earnestness  and 
thoughtfulness  of  men — to  whom  these  things  are  new  and 
startling,  whose  minds  are  not  prepared  by  long  familiarity 
to  acquiesce  in,  if  not  receive,  them — is  a  sifting  process 
for  the  opinions  of  any  teacher  who  feels  the  deep  moral 
obligation  of  answering  truly,  and  faithfully,  and  unrc- ' 
servedly,  his  fellow-man  looking  up  to  him  for  light  and 
guidance,  and  asking,  '  Are  you  sure  of  this  .-* '  '  Do  you 
know  this  to  be  true  .-' '  '  Do  you  really  believe  that .'' '  The 
state  of  everlasting  torment,  after  death,  of  all  impenitent 
sinners  and  unbelievers,  including  the  whole  heathen  world, 
as  many  teach,  is  naturally  so  amazing  and  overwhelming 
an  object  of  contemplation  to  them,  and  one  so  prominently 
put  forward  in  the  case  of  those  who  have  been  under 
certain  missionary  training,  that  it  quite  shuts  out  the 
cardinal  doctrines  of  the  Gospel,  the  Fatherly  relation  to 
us  of  the  Faithful  Creator.  The  conscience,  healthy,  though 
but  imperfectly  enlightened,  does  not  answer  to  such  de- 
nunciations of  indiscriminate  wrath,  and  cannot,  therefore, 
appreciate  what  is  represented  as  Redeeming  Love,  offering 
a  way  of  escape.  Hence  missionaries  often  complain  bit- 
terly of  the  hardness  of  heart  of  the  heathen,  and  say  that 


^  Co>nnic/i/ary,  p.  215. 


i 


iS6i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  157 


it  is  impossible  to  awaken  them  to  a  sense  of  sin.  Yet, 
without  such  consciousness  of  sin  in  the  hearer,  the  threats 
of  Divine  vengeance  can  produce  no  feehng  but  aversion 
and  a  determinate  unbelief  These  are  questions  which 
deserve  to  be  seriously  pondered."  ^ 

The  Bishop  might  have  added  that,  where  there  is  the 
consciousness  of  sin  in  the  heathen,  these  threats  must  first 
pervert  and  then  deaden  the  moral  sense,  or,  at  the  least, 
render  poor  and  infertile  soil  from  which  otherwise  a  rich 
harvest  might  have  been  looked  for.  But  on  reviewing  the 
general  ground  taken  by  him  on  this  subject,  we  may  safely 
say  that  never  was  a  protest  delivered  against  an  oppressive 
and  crushing  dogma  more  carefully  weighed,  more  sober, 
more  moderate  in  tone  and  temper  than  this  of  the  Bishop  of 
Natal.  Some  who  may  have  a  wider  acquaintance  with  the 
popular  literature  relating  to  this  doctrine  may  regard  his 
criticism  as  not  sufficiently  searching,  and  his  judgement  as,  on 
the  whole,  too  lenient ;  and  undoubtedly  there  are  aspects  in 
which  the  words  of  some  who  propound  this  dogma  call  for 
treatment  altogether  more  severe.  In  any  shape  or  form  the 
doctrine  is  utterly  revolting  ;  but  the  method  of  setting  it 
forth  has  been  often,  and  may  be  even  now,  characterized  by 
a  wilful  perversion,  malignity,  and  falsehood,  which  in  the 
interests  of  public  morality  and  decency  must  be  grappled 
with  and  put  down.  There  are  certain  classes  of  theologians 
or  preachers  who  delight  in  pictorial  descriptions  of  hell  and 
its  physical  tortures.  These  descriptions  fall  into  two  classes, 
the  one  exhibiting  conditions  of  solitary  imprisonment,  the 
other  depicting  an  infinite  multitude  of  sinners  left  to  herd 
with  each  other  and  to  sink  perpetually  lower  and  lower  in 
the  abyss  of  brutality  and  sin.  The  foulness  of  both  these 
classes  of  pictures  can  be  realised  only  by  adducing  one  or  two 
examples  of  each. 

*  Commentary^  p.  218. 


158  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  iv. 

The  Jesuit  Pinamonti  wrote  a  treatise  which  he  entitled 
Hell  opened  to  Christians.  This  treatise  has  been  translated, 
or  adapted,  for  the  use  of  the  English  public  by  the  Rev.  J. 
Furniss,  also  a  member  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  and  is  put 
forth,  pennissn  snperioruni,  under  the  title  of  TJie  Sight  of 
Hell,  as  a  work  specially  intended  "  for  children  and  young 
persons."  The  price,  being  only  one  penny,  brings  it  within 
the  reach  of  all.  In  this  tract  the  ideas  of  Pinamonti  are 
worked  out  systematically  and  presented  in  a  schedular  or  cate- 
chetical form.  To  the  question,  "  Where  is  Hell  .-^  "  the  answer 
is  "  that  it  is  in  the  middle  of  the  earth."  "  How  far  is  it  to 
Hell  ?  " — "  Just  four  thousand  miles,"  the  assertion  proving,  it 
may  be,  the  sincerity  and  candour  with  which  members  of  the- 
Roman  Church  can  receive  the  conclusions  of  astronomical 
science.  The  staunchest  Copernican  cannot  deny  that  a  dis- 
tance of  4,000  miles  intervenes  between  the  outer  crust  of  the 
earth  and  its  centre;  but  as  the  measurement  holds  good  from 
all  parts  of  the  crust,  the  hell  here  threatened  becomes  a 
mathematical  point.  The  point,  however,  is  boundless,  and 
has  ample  room  for  all  sinners  that  ever  have  lived  or  ever 
will  live.  "  It  is  red  hot."  "  Fire  on  earth  gives  light :  it  is 
not  so  in  hell :  in  hell  the  fire  is  dark."  For  each  sinner  there 
is  a  special  dungeon.  The  third  dungeon  is  described  as 
having  a  red-hot  floor.     On  it  stands  a  girl. 

"  She  looks  about  sixteen  years  old.  Her  feet  are  bare  ;  she 
has  neither  shoes  nor  stockings." 

The  door  opens,  and  she  falls  down  asking  for  mercy. 

" '  O  that  in  this  endless  eternity  of  years  I  might  forget  the 
pain  only  for  a  single  moment'  '  Never  shall  you  leave 
this  red-hot  floor,'  is  the  devil's  answer.  '  Is  it  so  .'' '  the  girl 
says,  with  a  sigh  that  seems  to  break  her  heart.  '  Then  at 
least  let  somebody  go  to  my  little  brothers  and  sisters  and 
tell  them  not  to  do  the  bad  thingfs  that   I   did.'     The  devil 


i86i.  ''THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  159 

answers  again  :  '  Your  little  brothers  and  sisters  have  the 
priests  to  tell  them  these  things.  If  they  will  not  listen  to 
the  priests,  neither  would  they  listen  if  somebod}'  should  go 
to  them  from  the  dead.'  " 

The  fourth  dungeon  is  the  boiling  kettle. 

"  Listen  !  There  is  a  sound  like  that  of  a  kettle  boiling.  Is 
it  really  a  kettle  which  is  boiling  .''  No.  Then  what  is  it  .'* 
Hear  what  it  is.  The  blood  is  boiling  in  the  scalded  veins 
of  that  boy  ;  the  brain  is  boiling  and  bubbling  in  his  head  ; 
the  marrow  is  boiling  in  his  bones." 

The  fifth  dungeon  is  the  "  red-hot  oven,"  in  which  is  "a  little 
child." 

"  Hear  how  it  screams  to  come  out.  See  how  it  turns  and 
twists  itself  about  in  the  fire.  It  beats  its  head  against  the 
roof  of  the  oven  ;  it  stamps  its  little  feet  on  the  floor  of  the 
oven.  To  this  child  God  was  very  good.  Very  likely  God 
saw  that  this  child  would  get  worse  and  worse,  and  would 
never  repent ;  and  so  it  would  have  to  be  punished  uinch 
more  in  hell.  So  God  in  His  mere)'  called  it  out  of  the 
world  in  its  early  childhood." 

It  would  not  be  easy  to  speak  in  words  too  severe  of  this 
farrago  of  abominable  and  blasphemous  trash  ;  but  if  we 
could  realise  the  wretched  terror  and  torture  inflicted  even  by 
the  more  ordinary  teachings  about  hell  on  the  minds  of  the 
young  and  the  sensitive,  we  could  not  fail  to  perceive  that 
such  teachers  are  committing  the  most  serious  of  offences 
against  the  best  interests  of  the  nation.  It  is  enough  to  say 
that  they  sit  down  to  their  desks  with  the  deliberate  intention 
of  telling  lies,  in  order  to  terrify  children  into  goodness.  That 
many  are  driven  into  reckless  defiance,  and  others  into  mad- 
ness, is  a  sad  and  stern  fact ;  and  thus  these  writers  inflict 
injuries  to  which  the  crimes  of  murderers  are  as  nothing. 
Ikit  there  is  yet  one  degree  further  of  cool   malignit}-,  which 


i6o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

can  be  reached  in  these  descriptions  ;  and  it  has  been  reached 
by  Protestant  writers  or  preachers,  or  by  Cathohcs  who  are 
not  in  the  Communion  of  Rome.  The  pictures  of  the  Jesuits 
are  horrible  and  blasphemous.  But  at  least  the  punishment 
of  sinners  is  confined  to  the  sinners,  and  we  are  not  told  that 
they  are  allowed  or  compelled  to  heap  sin  on  sin  in  a  con- 
tinually increasing  measure.  The  pictures  drawn  by  preachers 
of  the  Church  of  England  depict  a  society  from  which  all 
restraints  are  removed,  but  in  which  the  weakest  retain  the 
better  qualities  which  had  marked  them  during  their  sojourn 
upon  earth.  This  society  Dr.  Pusey  described  for  the  benefit 
of  the  University  of  Oxford  in  the  following  terms  : — 

"  Gather  in  your  mind  all  which  is  most  loathsome,  most  revolt- 
ing, the  most  treacherous,  malicious,  coarse,  brutal,  inventive, 
fiendish  cruelty,  unsoftened  by  any  remains  of  human  feeling  ; 
conceive  the  fierce,  fiery  eyes  of  hate,  spite,  frenzied  rage  ever 
fixed  on  thee,  glaring  on  thee,  looking  thee  through  and 
through  with  hate,  sleepless  in  their  horrible  gaze.  Hear 
those  yells  of  blasphemous  concentrated  hate  as  they  echo 
along  the  lurid  vaults  of  hell,  everyone  hating  everyone," 

with  more  to  the  same  purpose.^  Dr.  Pusey's  words  are  cited 
from  a  published  sermon.  I  must  cite  some  passages  from 
an  unpublished  sermon  by  a  very  eminent  Prelate,  and  I  do 
so  without  scruple,  because  I  heard  it  myself  and  write  from 
the  notes  which  I  made  at  the  time,  and,  further,  because  these 
passages  illustrate  the  astounding  ideas  of  justice  which  leave 
the  performances  even  of  the  Jesuits  Furniss  and  Pinamonti 
in  the  shade.  The  sermon  from  which  I  quote  was  addressed 
to  boys  and  girls  at  their  Confirmation,  and  it  dealt  with  the 
future  lot  of  those  sinners  on  whom  the  world  would  be  disposed 
to  look  favourably.  The  poet,  the  statesman,  the  orator,  the 
scholar  and  philosopher,  the   moralist,  the  disobedient   child, 

1  Everlasting  Punishvicnt.     A  sermon  preached  before  the  University 
of  Oxford,  on  the  Twenty-first  Sunday  after  Trinity,  1864. 


i86i.  ''THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  i6r 

the  careless  vouth,  were  each  in  turn  described  as  standino; 
before  the  judgement  seat,  and  deceiving  themselves  still  until 
the  delusion  was  dispelled  for  ever  by  the  words  which  bade 
them  depart  into  the  lake  of  fire. 

"  What,"  he  asked,  "  will  it  be  for  the  scholar  to  hear  this,  the 
man  of  refined  and  elegant  mind,  who  nauseates  every- 
thing coarse,  mean,  and  vulgar,  who  has  kept  aloof  from 
everything  that  may  annoy  or  vex  him,  and  hated  every- 
thing that  was  distasteful  to  him  ?  Henceforth  his  lot  is 
cast  with  all  that  is  utterly  execrable.  The  most  degraded 
wretch  on  earth  has  still  something  human  left  about  him  ; 
but  now  he  must  dwell  for  ever  among  beings  on  whose 
horrible  passions  no  check  or  restraint  shall  ever  be  placed. 

"  How,  again,  is  it  with  many  of  whom  the  world  thinks  well, 
who  are  rich  and  well-to-do,  sober  and  respectable,  benevo- 
lent and  kind  ?  Dives  is  sick,  and  his  neighbours  are  sorry, 
because  he  has  been  a  good  neighbour  to  them,  polite  and 
hospitable,  and  ev^er  ready  to  interchange  with  them  the 
amenities  of  life.  Dives  is  sick,  and  his  brothers  are  sorr}-, 
because  he  has  been  a  kind  brother  to  them,  and  now  they 
must  lose  his  care  and  assistance  and  see  him  no  more. 
Soon  all  is  over.  The  body  lies  in  state.  His  friends  come 
together  and  attend  it  to  the  tomb,  and  then  place  the 
recording  tablet  stating  him  to  be  a  very  paragon  of  human 
virtues.  For  some  months  the\'  speak  of  their  poor  neigh- 
bour, how  he  would  have  enjoyed  their  present  gaiet}',  how 
they  miss  him  at  his  accustomed  seat,  until  at  length  he  is 
forgotten.  And  while  all  this  is  going  on  upon  the  earth, 
where  is  Dives  himself  .-^  Suffering  in  torments  because  in 
his  lifetime  he  had  received  his  good  things." 

For  the  more  special  benefit  of  the  }-oung  candidates  for 
Confirmation  was  the  picture  of  the  school-girl  cut  off  at  the 
age  of  thirteen  or  fourteen.  In  her  short  life  on  earth  she 
had  not  seldom  pla)-ed  truant  from  school,  had  told  some 
lies,  had  been  obstinate  and  disobedient.  Now  she  had  to 
bid  farewell  to  heaven  and  to  hope,  to  her  parents,  her 
brothers,  and  sisters.     What  was  her  agony  of  grief,  that  she 

VOL.  I.  M 


1 62  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 


should  never  again  look  on  their  kind  and  gentle  faces,  never 
hear  their  well-known  voices  !  All  their  acts  of  love  return  to 
her  again, — all  the  old  familiar  scenes,  remembered  with  a 
regret  which  no  words  can  describe,  with  a  gnawing  sorrow 
which  no  imagination  can  realise.  She  must  leave  for  ever 
that  which  she  now  knew  so  well  how  to  value,  and  be  for 
ever  without  the  love  for  which  she  had  so  unutterable  a 
yearning.  She  must  dwell  henceforth  among  beings  on  whom 
there  is  no  restraint,  and  her  senses  must  be  assailed  with  all 
that  is  utterly  abominable.  The  worst  of  men  are  there,  with 
every  spark  of  human  feeling  extinguished,  without  any  law 
to  moderate  the  fury  of  their  desperate  rage.  To  complete 
the  picture,  the  lost  angels  were  mingled  with  this  awful 
multitude,  in  torment  themselves  and  the  instruments  of 
torturing  others.  They  stood  round  their  human  victims, 
exulting  in  their  misery,  and  increasing  perpetually  the  sting 
of  their  abiding  anguish.  The  bodies  of  men  as  well  as 
their  souls  were  subjected  to  their  fearful  sway  and  had  to 
suffer  all  that  cruelty  inconceivable  could  suggest. 

"  The  drunkard  they  seized  and  tortured  by  the  instrument  of 
his  intemperance  ;  the  lustful  man  by  the  instrument  of 
his  lust ;  the  tyrant  by  the  instrument  of  his  tyranny." 

In  order  to  understand  fairly  the  ground  taken  by  the 
Bishop  of  Natal,  we  have  to  mark  the  conclusions  or  axioms 
involved  in  these  elaborate  pictures  of  the  region  of  the 
doomed.  These  are  (i)  that  all  mankind  are  divided  into 
two  classes  at  the  moment  of  what  we  call  death  ;  (2)  that 
hell  is  the  abode  of  nothing  that  is  not  utterly  abominable  ; 
(3)  that  it  is  a  chaos  of  unrestrained  passions  ;  (4)  that  all  the 
inhabitants  are  mingled  together,  so  that  any  one  may  attack 
another  whenever  it  pleases  him  to  do  so;  and  (5)  that  all,  of 
whom  we  should  be  disposed  to  judge  most  leniently,  retain 
their  better  characteristics.  This  last  axiom  seems  hardly  to 
harmonise  with  the  rest ;  but  we  may  ask,  as  the  Bishop  of 


"  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  163 


Natal  asked,  how,  if  these  things  are  so,  each  man  is  to  be 
rewarded  according  to  his  works.  The  brutal  murderer  and 
the  bloodthirsty  despot  remain  what  they  were  ;  their  cruelty 
is  not  lessened,  their  physical  force  is  not  abated.  The 
philosopher  and  moralist,  the  man  of  learning  and  elegant 
tastes,  the  child  who  has  died  almost  in  infancy,  remain  also 
what  they  were ;  and  all,  murderers,  philosophers,  and 
children,  are  hurled  together  into  an  everlasting  chaos.  The 
strong  can  choose  out  victims  who  cannot  resist  them  ;  the 
weak  can  put  none  to  torment  in  their  turn,  and,  according  to 
the  supposition,  they  can  have  no  wish  to  torment  any  one. 
The  school-girl  may  be  oppressed  by  Csesar  Borgia ;  Shelley, 
Hume,  or  Gibbon  may  find  himself  assailed  by  Jonathan 
Wild  or  Colonel  Blood.  We  thus  see  (i)  that  the  punish- 
ment is  wholly  unequal,  unless  all  have  committed  the  same 
amount  of  sin,  and  are  equally  steeped  in  guilt  (and  the  very 
sting  of  the  torture  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  are  not),  or  unless 
all  become  equally  fiendish  (which  it  is  asserted  that  they 
do  not) ;  (2)  in  either  case  the  less  guilty  are  the  greater 
sufferers,  the  sensitive  and  refined,  the  benevolent  and 
honourable  man  being  trampled  on  by  furious  beings,  who  will 
lead  an  endless  carnival  of  violence  ;  and  (3)  these  will  scarcely 
be  punished  at  all, — remorse  of  conscience  they  may  with 
whatever  success  put  aside,  and  on  their  passions  there  is  to 
be,  by  the  hypothesis,  no  check  whatever ;  further  (4)  by 
this  hypothesis  evil  is  to  increase  and  multiply  for  ever,  and 
(5)  the  Divine  wrath  against  sin  is  put  wholly  out  of  sight.  It 
represents  the  lost  as  preying  on  each  other  ;  but  it  pictures 
none  of  them  as  brought  face  to  face  with  the  anger  of  God 
against  all  sin.  In  other  words,  the  sentence  of  an  infinitely 
perfect  Judge  has  nothing  whatever  moral  about  it.  It  is  a 
mere  physical  banishment,  where  sinners  may,  or  may  not, 
feel  the  sense  of  an  irreparable  loss.  The  degree  to  which 
they  feel  it  has  no  reference  to  any  action  of  God  in  their 
hearts,  but  is  determined  wholly  by  their  temper  and  habits 

M  2 


1 64  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

on  earth.  In  comparison  with  the  sensitive  moralist  the 
ruffian  will  feel  none  ;  and,  in  short,  the  Divine  hatred  for  sin 
will  never  be  brought  home  to  him. 

In  truth,  all  these  inferences  or  axioms  are  born  from  the 
deadly  habit  of  "  lying  for  God,"  or,  to  express  it  more  charit- 
ably, of  doing  evil  that  good  may  come.  The  hearts  of  those 
whom  God  has  not  made  sad  are  saddened  with  an  unspeak- 
able misery,  and  torture  is  meted  out  to  those  who  un- 
questionably do  not  deserve  it.^  Still  more,  everything  is 
made  to  give  place  to  a  radically  false  idea  which  associates 
punishment  for  sin  with  time.  They  who  maintain  that  all 
sinners  suffer  endless  torment  do  so  on  the  ground  that  end- 
less torment  alone  can  be  an  adequate  recompense  for  any 
sin.  It  is  no  matter  of  surprise,  therefore,  that  their  opponents 
should  believe  in  a  deliverance  from  the  Eternal  Fire  after  it 
has  been  endured  for  a  sufficient  time.  Fixed  penalties  have 
no  necessary  tendency  to  produce  a  change  of  character. 

To  return  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  it  is  true,  as  he 
writes, 

"  that  human  laws,  which  aim  more  at  prevention  of  crime 
than  amendment  of  the  offender,  do  mete  out  in  this  way, 
beforehand,  a  certain  measure  of  punishment  for  a  certain 
offence.      The  man   who  covets   his    neighbour's    property 

1  See  two  sermons  on  "  The  Revelation  of  God  the  Probation  of  Man," 
preached  before  the  University  of  Oxford,  by  Samuel,  Lord  Bishop  of 
Oxford,  1861.  In  one  of  these  he  speaks  of  a  young  man  of  great  pro- 
mise, of  much  simplicity  of  character  and  excellence  of  life,  as  dying  in 
darkness  and  despair  because  he  had  indulged  doubt,  these  doubts  being 
whether  the  sun  and  moon  stood  still  at  Joshua's  bidding.  I  need  hardly 
add  that  the  sermon  of  an  eminent  Prelate  from  which  I  have  already 
given  passages  was  a  sermon  preached  by  Bishop  Wilberforce.  It  is 
only  fair  to  say  that  in  his  work  on  Universalism  (London,  1887),  p.  116, 
the  Rev.  Thomas  Allin  mentions  the  name  of  Bishop  Wilberforce  among 
those  who  in  the  English  Church  have  avowed,  or  leaned  towards,  the 
"  larger  hope."  This  fact,  which  in  any  case  must  belong  to  quite  his 
latest  years,  is  not  mentioned  in  the  Life  of  BisJiop  Wilberforce ;  but 
Archdeacon  Farrar  states  that  it  I'ests  on  high  authority.  The  tidings 
must  be  received  with  a  feeling  of  thankfulness. 


I 


i86i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  165 


may,  if  he  like,  obtain  it  dishonestly,  at  a  certain  definite 
expense.  He  knows  that  he  may  possibly  escape  altogether  ; 
or,  at  the  worst,  he  can  only  suffer  this  or  that  pre-arranged 
penalty,  after  suffering  which  he  may  remain  (so  far  as  the 
effect  of  the  punishment  itself  is  concerned,  and  unless  other 
influences  act  upon  him)  as  bad  and  as  base  a  villain  as 
before.  But  God's  punishments  are  those  of  a  Father  .  .  . 
We  have  no  ground  to  suppose  that  a  wicked  man  will  at 
length  be  released  from  the  pit  of  woe,  when  he  has  suffered 
pain  enough  for  his  sins,  when  he  has  suffered  time  enough, 
'  a  certain  time  appointed  by  God's  justice.'  But  we  have 
ground  to  trust  and  believe  that  a  man  in  whose  heart  there 
is  still  Divine  Life,  in  whom  there  lingers  still  one  single 
spark  of  better  feeling,  the  gift  of  God's  Spirit,  the  token  of 
a  Father's  still  continuing  love,  will  at  length  be  saved  not 
from  suffering  but  from  sin."  ^ 

There  are,  in  truth,  two  aspects  of  the  great  question  of 
moral  evil.  There  is,  first,  its  existence  in  men  ;  and  next,  the 
purpose  with  respect  to  it  in  the  Divine  Mind.  This  purpose 
must  be  its  extinction,  unless  it  be  His  design  to  make  terms 
at  some  future  time  with  what  may  remain  unconquered  and 
unextinguished.  On  the  former  the  Bishop  of  Natal  employs, 
as  he  understands  St.  Paul  to  employ,  the  language  of  hope  ; 
the  latter  alternative  the  popular  or  traditional  theology,  of 
which  we  have  been  speaking,  practically  affirms.  It  admits  in 
words  that  the  final  cause  of  the  Divine  government  of  the 
world  is  the  victory  of  righteousness  over  sin  ;  but  the  picture 
drawn  of  this  victory  represents  it  as  a  frightful  failure. 
According  to  all  theories  which  regard  the  condition  of  men 
at  the  accidental  moment  of  their  death  as  final,  the  immense 
majority  of  the  whole  human  race  of  all  times  and  countries, 
all  wicked  heathen,  all  wicked  Christians,  all  children  who  die 
with  faults  not  repented  of — according  to  some,  all  children 
dying  unbaptized — all  mere  moralists,  all  men  of  indifferent 
or  negative  character,  depart  into  a  realm  where  lawlessness 
Commentary,  p.  263. 


1 66  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  iv 


reigns  supreme,  and  from  which  all  external  check  has  been 
deliberately  withdrawn.  It  is,  in  truth,  a  region,  not  in  which 
evil  is  conquered,  but  from  which  God  has  retreated.  It  is  the 
triumph  of  Ahriman,  who  may  henceforth  exult  in  the  endless 
aggrandisement  of  sin.  St.  Paul  would  have  rejected  with 
loathing  the  thought  that  the  victory  of  God  means  nothing 
more  than  this  ;  and  it  is  certain  that  no  man  in  his  senses  would 
ever  speak  thus  of  any  earthly  king  who  had  lost  nineteen- 
twentieths  of  his  kingdom,  over  which  he  had  been  obliged  to 
abandon  all  control.  The  failure  even  in  a  single  instance 
to  overcome  evil  by  good  is  really  the  defeat  of  the 
Righteous  Will.  We  might  give  the  earthly  king  all  the 
credit  which  a  qualified  success  deserves.  We  might  say  that 
he  had  put  bounds  to  rebellion,  and  prevented  the  rebels  from 
harming  those  who  had  not  joined  them  ;  but  it  would  be 
an  absurd  mockery  to  say  that  he  had  overthrown  his  enemies 
and  recovered  all  his  ancient  power  and  his  rightful  realm. 
Of  the  Divine  Ruler  we  should  be  compelled  to  say  that 
His  Will  was  not  victorious  while  even  a  solitary  soul  re- 
mained under  the  bondage  of  evil.  To  the  mind  of  St.  Paul 
such  pictures  of  mutilated  empire  never  presented  them- 
selves. For  him  Christ  was  exalted  as  King  over  all  • 
and  He  must  reign  until  He  has  put  all  enemies  under 
his  feet,  not  multitudes  of  individual  men,  in  whom  the 
evil  is  suffered  to  continue  unabated  or  endowed  with  in- 
creasing venom,  but  all  rule,  all  authority,  all  power,  all  the 
principles  of  self-will,  disobedience,  rebellion,  everything  which 
in  any  way  opposes  itself  to  the  Spirit  of  righteousness  and 
love.  The  final  conquest  and  extinction  of  this  opposing 
power  or  principle  is  the  destruction  of  the  last  enemy  which 
he  calls  death, — not  the  accident  to  which  we  give  that  name, 
but  that  state  which  alone  with  St.  Paul  deserved  to  be  called 
death.  The  former  was  a  change  of  material  particles  or 
elements,  if  so  we  are  to  speak  of  them, — a  change,  of  which 
to  cite  again  Bishop  Butler's  words,  we  know  nothing  beyond 


i86i.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS."  167 

some  of  its  phenomena.  The  latter  is  the  real  death,  which 
is  the  burden  of  the  warnings  of  all  prophets  and  righteous 
men  under  the  Old  Covenant  or  the  New.  It  is  the  death 
between  which  and  life  Moses  is  represented  as  calling  on  the 
people  to  choose.  It  is  the  condition  of  those  who  are  dead 
in  trespasses  and  sins.  It  is  the  death  which  is  the  wages  of 
sin,  the  death  of  which  alone  St.  Paul  speaks  when  he  says 
that,  as  in  Adam  all  die,  even  so  in  Christ  shall  all, — all 
without  exception, — be  made  alive.  On  this  subject  he  speaks 
with  no  uncertain  utterance.  As  to  the  complete  and  final  ex- 
tinction of  every  power  or  principle  antagonistic  to  the  principle 
or  Spirit  of  Righteousness  and  Truth  he  has  not  a  shadow  of 
doubt.  Sorrow,  sickness,  pain,  suffering,  the  dissolution  of  the 
frame  which  we  call  the  body,  all  these  are  accidents,  which 
St.  Paul  describes  as  part  of  the  Divine  disciphne,  to  which 
God  Himself  has  subjected  "  the  creature"  in  hope. 

"  These  pains,"  the  Bishop  of  Natal  adds,  drawing  out  the 
meaning  of  the  Apostle,  "  though  they  may  not  know  it, 
are,  in  truth,  birth-pangs,  which  ....  are  tending  to 
a  better  state  of  things  hereafter."  ^ 

We  are  apt  to  look  on  this  wretchedness,  or  vanity,  for  so 
St.  Paul  terms  it,  as  the  necessary  consequence  of  sin  and  so 
having  its  origin  in  sin  only.  We  have  not  the  faintest 
warrant  for  any  such  supposition.  It  is  a  purely  arbitrar\- 
assumption.-     These  sufferings,  and  the  accident  called  death, 

^  Commentary,  p.  219. 

-  Yet  it  is  an  assumption,  which  all  who  will  insist  on  regarding  the 
constitution  of  mortal  creatures  in  a  changing  world  as  having  been  intro- 
duced by  the  sin  of  some  of  these  creatures  must  always  be  tempted  to 
make.  They  are  right  in  thinking  that  on  this  hypothesis  something 
more  than  the  accident  called  death  has  to  be  accounted  for.  Tempests, 
earthquakes,  the  poison  of  serpents,  the  fangs  of  beasts  of  prey,  are  all  in 
a  certain  sense  evils,  are  evils  in  the  same  sense  perhaps  in  which  that 
which  we  call  physical  death  is  an  evil.  If  the  latter  is  the  result  of 
Adam's  sin,  so  also  must  be  the  former.  The  topic  is  generally  evaded 
or  slurred  over ;  and  he  is  a  bold  man  who  will  follow  Milton's  example 
in  making  Eve's  transgression  the  cause  of  a  declination  in  the  earth's 
axis.     The  attempt  is,  however,  sometimes  made.     I  have  heard  the  same 


1 68  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

which  for  all  we  know  may  end  them  altogether,  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  death  of  sin  from  which  we  pray  to  be  raised 
to  the  life  of  righteousness  ;  and  the  conquering  of  this,  the 
only  real  death,  will  be  the  ending  or  consummation  of  the 
work  of  the  Eternal  Son,  who  will  then  hand  over  to  the 
Father  the  power  intrusted  to  Him,  that  God  may  be  the 
All-in-all. 

Whatever  else  these  words  may  mean,  they  mean  at  least 
this,  that  nowhere  shall  any  room  be  left  for  the  unrestrained 
exercise  and  multiplication  of  sin,  that  everywhere  it  shall  be 
hunted  out  and  put  down,  and  shall  finally  be  extinguished  in 
the  creation  which  it  has  marred.  It  means  that  Divine 
righteousness  can  never  make  terms  with  sin  or  allow  it  any- 
where to  hold  its  own.  To  assert  that  God  can  so  make  terms 
is  to  assert  that  the  Divine  Nature  is  to  undergo  a  change,  for 
it  is  asserted  that  He  is  now  at  war  with  all  sin,  whereas  the 
time  will  come  when  He  will  admit  that  His  Will  is  not 
adequate  to  the  accomplishment  of  the  consummation  which 
He  had  desired  to  bring  about.^ 

distinguished  prelate,  of  one  of  whose  sermons  I  have  already  spoken, 
inform  his  hearers  that  thorns  and  talons  had  no  place  in  the  world 
before  the  fall  of  man,  that  the  rose  and  the  acacia  had  no  spinee,  the  lion 
and  the  tiger  no  claws,  that  the  several  stages  which  ended  in  the  con- 
summation of  human  rebellion  were  marked  by  the  beginning  and  growth 
or  increase  of  irritation  in  the  bark  of  the  tree  and  the  paw  of  the  beast ; 
that  when  the  woman  resolved  on  her  sin,  the  spinae  and  the  claws  pro- 
truded from  the  coating  of  the  plant  and  the  flesh  of  the  brute  which,  as 
soon  as  the  sin  was  accomplished,  became  to  its  own  amazement  and 
against  its  will  a  beast  of  prey.  The  picture  was  drawn  out  with  all 
the  fulness  of  detail  which  marked  this  eminent  prelate's  oratory,  and 
which,  in  this  instance,  gave  emphasis  to  the  conclusion,  "  Such,  my 
brethren,  was  the  effect  of  human  transgression  on  the  animal  and  vege- 
table worlds."  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  a  speaker  in  the  present  day 
could  draw  such  a  picture  without  some  consciousness  of  its  falsity. 
The  offence  here  lies  in  the  extravagance  with  which  the  hypothesis 
is  worked  out ;  but  the  fallacy  underlies,  of  necessity,  all  the  notions 
which  connect  with  moral  disobedience  and  sin  the  effects  of  the  changes 
and  chances  of  this  mortal  life. 

^  Of  theories  of  conditional  immortality  and  of  the  annihilation  of 
those  who  after  some  definite  term  may  remain  impenitent,  all  that  we 


1 886.  "  THE  COMMENTARY  ON  THE  ROMANS:'  169 

But  if  He  wills  to  conquer  sin,  what  power  shall  be  able  to 
withstand  Him  in  the  end?  It  is  not  in  this  age  only  that 
men  have  found  it  difficult  or  impossible  to  believe  in  the 
impotence  of  the  Divine  Will  for  subduing  finally  the  dis- 
obedience of  every  enemy.  The  difficulty  or  impossibility  of 
believing  this  led  Scotus  Erigena  to  affirm  the  final  restoration 
of  the  devil  himself,  and  to  cite  Origen  and  others  in  support 
of  this   assertion.^     The  words  of  St.  Paul  admit  of  neither 

need  say  is  that  they  do  not  differ  in  principle  from  the  extremest  decla- 
rations of  Augustinian  Calvinism.  It  is  unnecessary  to  give  the  names 
of  writers  who  have  propounded  such  theories.  The  idea  of  annihilation 
(whatever  that  may  be)  involves  the  Divine  defeat  quite  as  much  as  the 
idea  of  the  endless  torturing  of  beings  left  to  themselves  in  some  portion 
of  the  universe.  It  is  virtually  the  assertion  that  God,  unable  to  make  a 
bad  man  good,  can  only  put  him  out  of  being.  Of  the  possibility  of  such 
extinction  we  know  nothing  ;  but  we  implicitly  deny  the  fact  when  we 
assert  that  the  Divine  Will  must  in  the  end  be  absolutely  victorious. 

^  There  is,  indeed,  no  room  for  doubt  that  the  horrible  theology  of 
undying  vindictiveness  has  come  like  a  nightmare  on  Christendom,  and 
that  the  greatest  thinkers  and  holiest  men  in  the  Church  Catholic  have 
lived  in  a  joyful  assurance  of  the  complete  extinction  of  sin.  From 
Clement  of  Alexandria  we  have  the  declaration  that  "  all  things  have 
been  appointed  by  the  Lord  for  the  salvation  of  all  both  in  general  and  in 
particular  "  ;  that  "  necessary  discipline  by  the  goodness  of  the  great  over- 
seeing Judge  compels  even  those  who  have  entirely  despaired  to  repent"; 
and  that  "  all  things  are  arranged  with  a  view  to  the  salvation  of  the 
universe  by  the  Lord  of  the  Universe."  Gregory  of  Nyssa  speaks  of 
Christ  as  "  both  freeing  mankind  from  their  wickedness  and  healing  the 
very  inventor  of  wickedness  (the  devil),"  and  with  an  outburst  of  joy 
declares  that  "  when  in  the  lengthened  circuits  of  time  the  evil  now 
blended  with  and  implanted  in  them  has  been  taken  away,  when  the 
restoration  to  their  ancient  state  of  those  who  now  lie  in  wickedness  shall 
have  taken  place,  there  shall  be  with  one  voice  thanksgiving  from  the 
whole  creation."  Elsewhere  he  declares,  "  It  is  needful  that  at  some  time 
evil  shall  be  removed  utterly  and  entirely  from  the  realm  of  existence. 
For  since  by  its  very  nature  evil  cannot  exist  apart  from  free  choice,  when 
free  choice  becomes  in  the  power  of  God,  shall  not  evil  advance  to  utter 
abolition,  so  that  no  receptacle  for  it  shall  be  left.''"  Again,  "At  some 
time  the  nature  of  evil  shall  pass  to  extinction,  being  fully  and  completely 
removed  from  the  realm  of  existence,  and  Divine  unmixed  goodness  shall 
embrace  in  itself  every  rational  nature  ;  nothing  that  has  been  made  by 
God  falling  away  from  the  Kingdom  of  God."  And  again,  "  When  every 
created  being  is  at  harmony  with  itself,  and  every  tongue  shall  confess 


lyo  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  iv. 

modification  nor  exception.  The  reign  of  Christ  will  last  until 
every  opposing  principle  has  been  utterly  extinguished.  His 
salvation,  then,  is  not  partial.  It  cannot  be  so  ;  for  all  theories 
of  partial  salvation  imply,  of  necessity,  a  compromise  with  sin. 
This  compromise  with  sin  is  inconceivable ;  and  with  this 
inconceivability  all  such  theories  fall  to  the  ground. 

The  Bishop  of  Natal's  conclusions  might  have  been  put 
more  decisively  had  he  thus  fixed  his  mind  on  the  consum- 
mation of  the  Divine  Work  in  the  conquest  and  extinction  of 
evil.  In  other  words,  he  might  have  advanced  somewhat 
further  ;  but  the  actual  work  accomplished  by  him  was  great 
indeed.  He  moved  with  no  faltering  step.  He  refused  to 
allow  himself  to  be  entangled  with  any  theological  inconsist- 
encies and  contradictions  ;  and  the  result  was  a  vindication  of 
the  Divine  Love  and  Righteousness,  the  meaning  of  which 
could  neither  be  wrested  nor  put  out  of  sight.  This  was  the 
great  purpose  which  he  set  before  himself  in  his  Commentary 
on  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore, 
that  this  little  book  roused  the  deepest  "  theological  hatred  " 
in  the  minds  of  his  accusers  at  the  so-called  "  trial "  in 
Capetown. 

that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord,  wlien  every  creature  shall  have  been  made  one 
body,  then  shall  the  body  of  Christ  be  subject  to  the  Father.  .  .  .  Now, 
the  body  of  Christ,  as  I  have  often  said,  is  the  whole  of  humanity.  .  .  . 
When  then  all  who  once  were  God's  enemies  shall  have  been  made  His 
footstool  (because  they  shall  receive  in  themselves  the  Divine  imprint), 
when  death  shall  have  been  destroyed  in  the  subjection  of  all,  which  is 
not  servile  humility  but  immortality  and  blessedness,  Christ  is  said,  by 
St.  Paul,  to  be  made  subject  to  God."  With  equal  assurance  Theodoret 
declares  "  that  in  the  future  life,  when  corruption  is  at  an  end  and  im- 
mortality granted,  there  is  no  place  for  suffering,  but  it  being  totally 
removed,  no  form  of  sin  remains  at  work.  So  shall  God  be  all  in  all — all 
things  being  out  of  danger  of  falling,  and  converted  to  Him." 

In  short,  the  traditional  notions  on  the  subject  of  future  punishment 
may  be  regarded  as  virtually  a  modern  heresy,  to  be  beaten  down  and 
summarily  cast  aside.  For  super-abundant  evidence  of  this  fact  I  may 
refer  to  Mr.  Atkin's  work  on  Uiiiversalisni,  already  mentioned,  p.  164. 


CHAPTER  V. 

PREPARATIONS   FOR    THE    GREAT   WARFARE. 
1862-63. 

We  have  seen  that  the  necessity  of  raising  funds  must 
in  any  case  have  taken  the  Bishop  to  England  at  this  time : 
but  the  uncertainty  as  to  the  results  which  might  follow  the 
publication  of  his  criticisms  on  the  Pentateuch  rendered  it 
unwise  to  leave  his  family  in  Natal.  Speaking  of  their 
departure,  Mrs.  Colenso  says  that 

"they  packed  all  their  most  valued  possessions  and  set  out 
with  the  feeling  that  quite  possibly  they  were  bidding  a  last 
farewell  to  a  much-loved  home  and  people.  Archdeacon  and 
Mrs.  Grubb  (Miss  Alice  Mackenzie)  remained  in  charge  of 
the  Mission,  the  sadness  of  the  parting  being  deepened  by 
the  arrival,  two  days  before,  of  the  news  of  the  death  of 
Bishop  Mackenzie.  After  a  farewell  service  in  the  little 
wooden  chapel,  the  journey  down  to  Durban  was  accom- 
plished by  ox-waggon,  in  the  same  patriarchal  fashion  as 
the  journey  up  seven  years  ago,  and  lasting  for  three  days. 
Part  of  the  '  trek  '  was  by  night,  when  the  Bishop  beguiled 
the  weariness  of  the  little  party  with  talk  about  the  stars 
and  with  stories  of  the  wanderings  of  Ulysses.  Passage  by 
sailing-vessel  rather  than  by  the  then  monthly  mail  steamer 
was  chosen  for  economy's  sake.  It  was  an  interesting 
voyage.  The  Medusa,  though  small,  was  a  capital  sailer^ 
outstripping  every  vessel  we  fell  in  with.' 


172  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  Bishop  found  himself  in  quiet 
waters  when  the  ten  weeks'  voyage  came  to  an  end.  Bishop 
Gray  had  preceded  him  to  England,  and,  as  the  sequel  will 
show,  had  in  concert  with  some  of  his  brother-Bishops  deter- 
mined on  a  line  of  action  which,  it  \vas  hoped,  would  end  in 
his  complete  discomfiture.  The  Bishop  of  Natal  was  wholly 
in  the  wrong.  He  must  be  made  to  confess  himself  in  the 
wrong,  and,  if  possible,  to  eat  his  own  words.  But  while  he 
had  thus  to  parry  the  manoeuvres  of  not  very  ingenuous 
opponents,  he  had  at  the  same  time  to  undergo  the  harder 
struggle  between  duty  and  personal  affection.  If  he  was  met 
by  resistance,  either  active  or  passive,  in  some  quarters  from 
•which  he  might  have  looked  for  sympathy  if  not  for  support 
and  encouragement,  this  disappointment  was  as  nothing 
■compared  with  the  forfeiture  of  old  and  precious  friendship. 
Almost  from  the  moment  of  his  landing  it  became  manifest 
that  he  must  prepare  himself  for  the  great  warfare  ;  and 
as  this  warfare  was  solely  and  wholly  in  the  cause  of  truth,  he 
was  ready,  rather  than  be  untrue  to  that  cause,  to  yield 
up,  if  need  be,  even  the  good  opinion  of  dear  friends.  All 
that  he  could  do  was  to  see  that  the  breach  of  friendship 
should  not  come  from  himself;  and  to  this  resolution  he  was 
persistently  faithful. 

The  terror  felt  at  this  time  by  the  several  parties  which 
professed  to  regard  the  raising  of  any  questions  as  to  the 
date,  authorship,  and  historical  value  of  any  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  as  an  onslaught  on  the  very  principles  ofi 
Christianity  and  even  of  all  religion,  is  curiously  shown  in 
Bishop  Gray's  Charge  to  the  Diocese  of  Natal,  delivered  in 
1S64.  In  this  charge  the  one  over-mastering  desire  by  which 
he  acknowledges  himself  to  have  been  actuated  in  reference 
to  Bishop  Colenso's  criticisms  on  the  Pentateuch  was  not  to 
prove  their  falsity,  but  to  prevent  their  publication.  There 
are  some,  perhaps  many,  who  lose  their  tempers  in  discussions 


i862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       173 


on  the  antiquity  of  our  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  and  regard  as  a 
terrible  heresy,  or  even  as  a  sign  of  moral  obliquit}',  the  asser- 
tion of  the  manifest  fact  that  they  were  not  known  in  their 
present  form  in  the  days  of  Perikles.  But  this  agitation  is  as 
nothing  to  the  scare  of  those  who  feel,  or  profess  to  feel,  that 
everything,  their  peace  of  mind  here  and  their  highest  hopes 
hereafter,  must  give  way  beneath  them,  if  it  should  turn  out 
that  Moses  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  composition  of  the 
book  of  Genesis.  Accordingly,  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  was 
anxious,  not  to  insure  a  fair  examination,  but  to  prevent  all 
scrutiny  whatsoever.  His  Charge  ^  gives  the  story  of  his 
doings  in  a  passage,  of  which  almost  every  sentence  bristles 
with  assumptions  and  misrepresentations. 

"Upon  the  appearance,"  Bishop  Gray  tells  us,  "of  his  first 
work,  assailing  the  faith  through  his  Commentary  [on  the 
Romans],  I  wrote  a  letter,  earnestly  intreating  him  not  to 
publish,  and,  when  too  late  to  hinder  publication,  sought  to 
point  out  to  him  wherein  he  had  taught  amiss.  When 
unable  to  convince  him,  I  referred  the  book  and  the  cor- 
respondence to  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  at  home,  who 
met,  at  the  call  of  the  late  Archbishop,  now  with  God,  to 
consider  it.  Before  I  could  receive  their  sanction  the  death 
of  the  well-beloved  Bishop  Mackenzie  compelled  me  to 
proceed  to  England.-  I  then  received  the  concurrence  of 
the  Bishops,  generally,  in  the  course  which  I  had  pursued  ; 
and  on  the  arrival  of  your  late  Bishop"  shortly  after  me  in 
England,  I  communicated  their  views  to  him.  At  the  same 
time  I  intreated  him  to  meet  three  of  the  most  eminent 
Bishops  of  our  Church,  who  had  expressed  their  willingness 
to  confer  with  him  on  his  arrival  and  discuss  his  difficulties 
with  him,   hoping   that  he   might    thereby   be   induced    to 

1  P.  27. 

"^  Bishop  Gray  must  liavc  started  by  the  first  steamer  after  getting  this 
news.  He  therefore  reached  England  some  weeks  before  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  in  his  little  sailing  vessel. 

^  It  suited  Bishop  Gray's  purpose  to  use  this  form. 


J 74  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

suppress  his  book,  so  full  of  error.  He,  however,  declined. 
He  would  not  meet  more  than  one,  and  then,  not  as  if  he 
were  in  any  error,  but  only  as  a  common  seeker  after  truth. 
At  that  time  he  had  not  published  his  open  assault  upon 
the  Word  of  God  ;  but,  hearing  that  he  had  printed,  for 
private  circulation  in  the  colony,  a  Avork  reputed  to  be 
sceptical  in  its  tendency,^  I  besought  him  not  to  put  it 
forth  in  England,  until  he  had  met  and  discussed  his  views 
with  the  Bishops.  But  this  also  was  declined,  and  the  work 
was  published. 

Two  years  before  the  delivery  of  this  Charge,  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  had  told  Bishop  Gray  that  the  rough  draft  of  the  book 
had  been  printed,  not  for  circulation  in  the  colony,  but  solely 
that  it  might  be  submitted  to  the  judgement  of  valued  friends 
in  England.  One  charge  is  thus  rebutted  ;  and  after  the  denial 
given  to  it  by  Bishop  Colenso,  Bishop  Gray  ought  to  have 
been  ashamed  to  repeat  it.  There  remained  the  other  charge, 
that  Bishop  Colenso  rushed  impetuously  into  publication, 
without  caring  for  the  advice  of  those  eminent  scholars  on 
the  English  Bench  who  might  have  lightened  or  removed  his 
difficulties.  This  charge  is  disposed  of,  or  rather  turned 
against  the  accuser,  by  the  following  narrative  of  the  Bishop 
of  Natal. 

"  Within  a  few  days  after  my  arrival  in  England,  I  received  a 
letter  from  the  Bishop  of  Oxford.  ...  In  this  letter  the 
Bishop  said,  with  reference  to  some  points  in  my  Com- 
mentary on  the  Romans,  '  On  these  points  I  should  greatly 
like  calmly  and  prayerfully  to  talk  with  you,  if  you  will 
let  me.  They  are  too  long  for  writing.  But  what  I 
mainly  wish  for  now  is,  to  pray  you  not  to  take  any 
irretrievable    step,   until   you   have,   in   free  discourse  with 

1  By  whom  was  it  so  reputed  ?  Bishop  Gray  admits  that  the  book 
was  not  pubhshed  at  the  time  to  which  he  refers.  He  must,  therefore, 
have  formed  his  opinion  on  mere  hearsay  or  on  information  received  by 
breach  of  confidence. 


1 862.    PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       175 

some  of  us,  reviewed  the  whole  matter.  .  .  .  All  I  would 
ask  for  Christ's  sake  is  that  you  rest  not  satisfied  until  you 
have  given  us  some  such  opportunity  for  free  brotherly 
converse.  ...  If  you  would  come  to  me  to  give  a  day  or 
two  to  such  a  consultation,  you  would  find  a  warm  greet- 
ing, and,  I  hope,  a  loving  and  unprejudiced  discussion  of 
differences.' 
"  To  this  affectionate  appeal  I  was  about  to  respond  at  once 
in  the  same  spirit,  accepting  heartily  the  invitation  given, 
when  another  post  on  the  same  day  brought  me  a  letter 
from  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  which  seemed  to  change 
wholly  the  character  of  the  proposed  discussion.^  It  ap- 
peared to  me,  in  short,  that,  instead  of  being  invited  to  a 
friendly  conference,    I   was   about   practically  to   be   '  con- 

1  The  Bishop  of  Natal  was  quite  right.  The  nature  of  the  scheme 
taken  in  hand  is  revealed  by  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  himself.  Writing  to 
Bishop  Gray,  June  ist,  1862,  before  the  arrival  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  he 
says  :  "  We  have  now  held  two  episcopal  meetings  on  the  Bishop  of  Natal's 
case.  .  .  .  We  met  on  Friday — a  large  number.  .  .  .  The  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester had  your  letter  to  Natal  and  his  answer  communicated  to  the 
Archbishop,  and  offered  to  read  them.  London  objected.  The  book 
[  The  Commentary  on  the  Romans']  was  all  we  had  to  do  with.  I  replied. 
.St.  David's  backed  me,  and  after  tedious  discussion  your  letter  was  read. 
The  Bishop  of  London  (Tait)  declared  it  to  be  an  absolute  perversion 
of  the  whole  book :  a  tissue  of  misrepresentations,  &c.  I  responded, 
and  Salisbury,  that  it  was  a  clear,  loving,  fair,  and  most  considerate 
statement  of  his  errors.  .  .  .  Another  discussion  again  settled  for  reading, 
and  it  was  read  through. 

"  Then  came  a  long  discussion  as  to  our  course.  I  suggested  that  on 
his  landing  we  should  open  personal  communication  with  him.  .  .  .  that 
ttv  had  read  his  book  ....  and  invited  its  suppression  ;  and,  failing  that, 
agreed  to  request  him  not  to  officiate  in  our  dioceses  until  the  matter  had 
been  legally  examined.  ...  St.  David's  seemed  to  fear  that  such  a 
common  action  had  too  much  the  appearance  of  a  synodical  condemnation 
without  a  hearing.  .  .  .  London  was  strong  against  action  as  actioi), '  was 
not  prepared  to  say,'  &c.  The  old  story.  '  Did  not  know  that  it  was 
beyond  the  teaching  of  Mr.  Maurice.  .  .  .  If  he  did  this,  must  he  not 
forbid  the  Bishop  of  Brechin,'  &c." — Life  of  Bishop  IVilberforce,  vol.  iii. 
pp.  114,  115- 

In  short,  a  trap  was  laid  for  the  Bishop  of  Natal  before  he  had  landed 
in  England  ;  and  he  was  then  left  to  believe,  it  would  seem,  that  no  trap 
had  been  laid  at  all. 


176  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 


vened '  by  him,  as  Metropolitan,  before  a  bench  of  bishops, 
for  my  offences.  And  that  I  was  not  wrong  in  this  sup- 
position is  shown  by  the  fact,  that  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
did  not  correct  my  own  view  of  the  matter,  as  expressed  to 
him  in  my  letters,  copied  below,  and  that  he  still  says,  in 
the  extract  cited  from  his  charge,  '  He  would  not  meet 
more  than  one,  and  then  not  as  if  he  ivere  in  any  error,  but 
only  as  a  common  seeker  after  truth.' 

"  This  language  may  be  compared  with  the  expressions  of  the 
Bishop  of  Oxford,  '  free  discussion  with  some  of  us,'  '  free 
brotherly  converse,'  '  loving  and  unprejudiced  discussion  of 
differences.' 

"  (i)  As  by  submitting  to  be  thus  called  to  account  by  him,  I 
should  have  recognised  indirectly  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Metropolitan,  I  thought  it  my  duty  to  reply  to  the  Bishop 
of  Oxford  and  to  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  as  follows  : — 


"To  THE  Bisiior  OF  Oxford. 

'■'■^August  9,  1S62. 

'  I  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  your  most  kind  and  friendly 
letter.  I  should  be  most  happy  to  discuss  any  points  in  my 
book  on  the  Romans,  either  with  yourself,  or  any  other 
brother  bishop  singly  and pj^ivately  ;  though  I  must  confess 
that  I  do  not  anticipate  much  result  from  such  a  conference 
as  the  views  which  I  have  expressed  in  that  book  are,  gene- 
rally speaking,  not  the  result  of  a  few  years'  Colonial 
experience,  but  have  been  long  held  by  me,  have  grown 
with  my  growth,  and  are,  as  I  fully  believe,  quite  compatible 
with  a  conscientious  adherence  to  the  Articles  and  Formu- 
laries of  the  Church  of  England.  I  do  not  think,  however, 
that  any  good  would  result  from  my  meeting  a  number  of 
Bishops  together  upon  the  subject,  and,  therefore,  would 
prefer  declining  your  very  kind  invitation. 

'  Under  any  circumstances  I  am  sure  that  you  would  be  the 
last  person  to  wish  me,  for  any  personal  reasons,  to  shrink 
from  the  confession  of  what  I  believe  to  be  the  truth.' 


]S62.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       177 


"To  THE  Bishop  of  CArETOWN. 

"  '  Just  before  your  letter  reached  me,  I  had  received  one — a 
v^ery  kind  one — from  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  making  a 
similar  proposal.  I  should  be  most  happy  to  meet  any  of 
my  brother  Bishops  singly,  and  discuss  with  him  any  portion 
of  my  book  on  the  Romans  ;  but  for  various  reasons  I  do 
not  think  it  would  be  productive  of  any  good  result  for  me 
to  meet  a  number  of  them  together  ;  and  I  have  written  to 
that  effect  to  the  Bishop  of  Oxford. 

" '  With  respect  to  my  other  book  ....  it  is  quite  true  that  I 
have  been  for  some  time  past  deeply  engaged  in  the  study 
of  the  Pentateuch,  and  have  arrived  at  some  startling  re- 
sults. I  have  had  a  portion  of  them  privately  printed,  for 
the  express  purpose  of  laying  them  before  such  of  my 
friends  in  England  as  would  be  most  likely  to  be  able  to 
give  me  assistance  and  advice  in  this  matter,  by  possessing 
sufficient  acquaintance  with  the  subject,  and  by  being  free 
from  those  strong  prejudices  which  would  prevent  their  dis- 
cussing calmly  and  dispassionately  with  me  the  points  in 
question.  I  trust  that  I  duly  reverence  both  the  Church  and 
the  Bible  ;  but  the  truth  is  above  both.  I  have  already  taken 
measures  for  submitting  my  views  on  the  Pentateuch  to 
some  of  my  friends,  and  shall  be  glad  to  do  so  privately  to 
any  intelligent,  candid,  and  truth-seeking  student.  Among 
others,  I  had  thought  of  asking  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's 
to  confer  zvitJi  me  upon  the  subject.  But  I  am  not  prepared 
at  present  to  propound  my  views  prematurely  to  any  one.' 

(ii.)  The  Bishop  of  Capetown  replied  as  follows : — 

^'■'•August  12,  1862. 

""  '  I  think  you  have  not  quite  understood  the  object  of  my 
proposal.  I  have  been  placed  in  great  difficulties  by  the 
book  [Commentary  on  the  Romans']  which  }'ou  have  pub- 
lished. People  in  England,  and  many  of  the  Bishops  who 
have  read  it,  are  pained  and  shocked  by  it.  They  have 
thought,  and  so  have  I,  that  the  most  Christian  course  was 
VOL.  L  N 


178  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

for  those  who  were  able  to  do  so  to  meet  you  and  endeavour 

to  convince  you  that  you  were  in  error. 
" '  If  by  God's  blessing  they  should  succeed  in  this,  it  might 

lead   to  your  withdrawing    a   book  which  so  many  think 

unsound,  and  render  all  other  proceedings  unnecessary. 
" '  I  doubt  much  whether  one  Bishop  would  meet  you  (!)  ;  and 

I  do  hope  that  you  will  not  decline  to  meet  any  who  wish 

to    discuss    the    language    used,    lovingly   with    you,    as    a 

Brother.' 

"  As  from  the  expression  above  italicised  it  was  now  plain  to 
me  that  the  proposed  proceedings,  under  the  guise  of  a 
friendly  conference,  were  really  intended  to  have  a  formal 
meaning,  and  to  be  in  fact,  indirectly,  an  assertion  of  juris- 
diction over  me, — and  as  I  did  not  believe  that  in  my  book 
on  the  Romans  I  had  written  anything  which  could  warrant 
such  a  course  of  conduct  towards  me,  so  that  I  must  not 
so  much  as  indulge  the  thought  that  any  Bishop  of  the 
Church  of  England  would  be  willing  to  meet  me  singly, 
in  private  friendly  conference, — I  replied  briefly,  adhering 
to  my  former  resolution. 

"  (iii.)  I  now  quote  the  Bishop  ot  Capetown's  answer,  dated 
August  20,  1862. 

" '  I  am  very  sorry  that  you  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
you  will  not  meet  the  Bishops  ;  and  I  do  earnestly  hope  that 
you  will  reconsider  your  decision, 

"'Just  think  what  the  position  of  this  painful  case  is.  You 
have  published  a  work  [on  the  Romans]  which  has  distressed 
many  both  in  this  country  and  in  Africa, — which  has  led 
some  of  your  clergy  to  commvmicate  formally  with  me  on 
the  subject, — which,  when  examined,  appears  to  me  and  the 
other  Bishops  of  the  Province  to  contain  teaching  at  variance 
with  that  of  the  Church  of  which  we  are  ministers,  and 
w^hich  is,  in  consequence,  referred  by  me  to  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  and  through  him  to  certain  other  Bishops 
for  their  opinions.^     These  Bishops,  without  pretending  to  sit 

1  In  other  words,  the  whole  plan  of  action  had  been  preconcerted 
before  the  arrival  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  in  England,  and  the  trap  had 
been  laid  accordingly. 


I 


1 862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       179 

in  judgement  upon  the  work,  do,  nevertheless,  very  generally 
[not  unanimousl}-]  concur  in  thinking  that  its  teaching  is 
extremely  painful,  and  apparently  not  in  accordance  with 
that  of  the  Church  of  England, — so  much  so  indeed  that 
several  of  them  have  expressed  themselves  as  unable  under 
present  circumstances  to  admit  you  to  officiate  in  their 
dioceses.  You  ma}-  be  able  at  an  interview  to  explain 
much  that  shocks  the  mind  of  others  ;  or  the\'  ma)-,  if  they 
should  meet  you,  be  able  to  convince  you  that  you  have 
expressed  yourself  unguardedh'  and  unscripturall}-. 

"  '  In  the  hope  that  by  God's  grace  they  might  be  able  to  do 
this,  men  like  the  Archbishop  of  York,  the  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
the  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  and  I  cioubt  not  others  too,  would 
meet  you  and  endeavour  to  show  you  where  }-our  error  lies. 
If  they  should  succeed,  the}-  would  win  a  brother.  If  they 
should  fail,  they  would  at  least  have  used  e\-ery  effort  to 
lead  him  back  to  the  truth  from  which  the}-  believe  him  to 
have  departed.  Is  not  the  course  proposed,  of "  two  or 
three  "  meeting  you,  the  truly  Christian  and  Scriptural  one  ? 
Is  it  right  to  refuse  to  be  a  part}'  to  it  t 

" '  The  case  is  not  an  ordinar}-  one.  You  cannot  but  be  aware 
that  you  have  propounded  views  which  are  ver}-  startling, — 
which  }-ou  did  not  hold  when  }'ou  were  consecrated, — some 
of  which  have  just  been  condemned  b}'  a  legal  Court, — 
and  which  it  is  impossible  that  the  Church  should  silent!}' 
acquiesce  in.  It  is  not  we  who  arc  the  first  to  move  in  tliis 
matter.  It  is  }"ou  that  have  departed  from  }'our  former 
standing-ground,  and  have  been  led  to  adopt  views  which  I 
am  sure  }'ou  are  far  too  honest  to  maintain  are  those  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  to  propagate  those  views  by  your 
writings  and  by  word  of  mouth.  As  the  guardians  of  the 
Church's  faith,  we  cannot  but,  under  such  circumstances, 
plead  with  you.^ 

" '  Forgive  the  freedom  with  which  I  write.  There  is,  I  believe, 
on  the  part  of  the  Bishops  a  ver}'  earnest  desire  to  do  what 

^  When,  and  by  what  authority,  and  by  what  instrument,  have  the 
Bishops  of  the  several  English  dioceses  been  constituted  "  guardians  of 
the  faith  of  the  Church  of  England ''  ? 

N  2 


I  So  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

in  them  lies  to  recover  one  who  is  ....  [I  omit  some 
compHmentary  expressions].  I  venture  to  hope  that,  if  you 
are  willing  to  meet  the  chief  pastors  of  the  Church  at  home 
in  the  same  spirit  in  which  they  are  prepared  to  meet  you, 
and  to  discuss  with  them  those  views  which  you  have 
recently  adopted  and  propounded,  good  only  would  result 
from  it.  But  I  confess  that  /  do  not  see  hoiv  they  can  consent 
to  meet  you  one  by  one,  merely  in  a  private  way,  or  treat  the 
grave  statements  which  you  have  made  as  open  questions.^ 
Many  of  these  statements,  however  qualified  by  a  different 
language  in  other  parts  of  your  book,  appear  to  all  the 
divines  that  I  have  met  with,  who  have  studied  your  book, 
to  be  both  unsound  and  dangerous.  You  may  be  able  to 
show  them  that  you  have  been  misunderstood  ;  or  you  may 
be  led  to  qualify  statements  which  we  regard  as  rash  and 
erroneous.  Do  not  lightly  throw  away  the  chance  of  setting 
yourself  right,  and  settling  a  matter  of  very  great  importance 
to  yourself  and  to  the  Church.^ 

"  (iv.)  My  reply  to  the  above  was  as  follows,  dated  August 
27,   1862  ; — 

"  '  I  received  your  last  letter  before  I  left  Cornwall  ;  but  have 
delayed  replying,  that  I  might  give  its  contents  a  due 
consideration.  I  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  the  kind 
expressions  which  you  have  used  towards  myself  in  it.  I 
wish  indeed  that  I  were  more  worthy  of  them.  But  as  to 
the  main  question  I  am  sorry  to  be  obliged  to  say  that  I 
feel  it  due  to  myself  and  to  my  rightful  position  to  adhere 
to  my  resolution  of  declining  to  meet  a  number  of  Bishops 
together  in  the  way  proposed. 

"  '  I  do  so  for  the  following  reasons  among  others.  I  am  so 
far  from  considering  that  the  views  which  I  have  expressed 

^  The  case  was  therefore  prejudged  by  the  system  of  Jeddart  justice, 
2  The  conceivable  possibility  that  these  Christian-minded  counsellors 
might  find  themselves  mistaken  and  the  Bishop  of  Natal  right  is  not 
taken  into  consideration  at  all.  In  other  words,  the  infallibility  of  the 
would-be  advisers  is  taken  for  granted  ;  and  their  infallibility,  it  is  to  be 
supposed,  is  to  rest  on  the  infallibility  of  the  Church  of  England,  which 
disclaims  this  infallibility  for  herself  and  denies  it  to  all  other  Churches. 


I 


i862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       i8i 

in  my  Commentary  on  the  Romans  are  contrary  to  the 
teaching  of  the  Church  of  England,  that — as  indeed  I  have 
already  stated  in  the  first  letter  which  I  addressed  to  you 
from  Natal  in  reply  to  yours  expressing  your  disapproval 
of  my  book — I  entirely  believe  that  what  I  have  taught 
in  that  book  I  am  permitted  to  teach  within  the  liberty 
allowed  me  by  the  Articles  and  Prayer-Book  of  the  Church 
of  England,  and  with  a  conscientious  adherence  to  the 
letter  and  spirit  of  them.  With,  I  think,  two  exceptions  only, 
those  views  I  held  as  strongly  and  preached  them  as  plainly 
when  I  was  consecrated  as  I  do  now.  On  two  points,  I 
admit, — the  Scriptural  doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  and  the 
subject  of  Eternal  Punishment, — my  mind  has  progressed 
with  advancing  age,  experience,  inquiry,  and  meditation,  to 
my  present  views.  But  I  have  said  nothing,  as  I  believe, 
and  as  able  and  eminent  divines  assure  me,  which  can 
justly  deserve  the  censures  which  some  have  passed  upon 
my  book. 

" '  Of  course,  I  am  aware  that  the  recent  judgement  of  Dr. 
Lushington  [in  Essays  and  Revietus^  brings  me  under*" 
condemnation  on  certain  points.^  But  you  cannot  surely 
believe  that  that  judgement  will  be  maintained  in  the  Court 
of  Appeal,  when  it  obviously  departs  from  the  very 
principles  which  the  Judge  himself  laid  down,  and  which 
the  higher  Court  has  laid  down  in  other  cases.  Mr.  Grote's 
pamphlet  makes  this  absolutely  plain.  If,  however,  it  should 
be  confirmed  on  these  points,  it  will  then  be  the  duty  of 
myself,  and  a  multitude  of  other  clergymen  who  have  held 
and  taught  views  like  my  own,  to  decide  on  our  future 
course. 

" '  Believing,  then,  that  there  is  no  real  ground  whatever  for  the 
opinion  that  the  views  expressed  in  m\'  Commentary  on  the 
Romans,  however  they  may  differ  from  those  of  some  of  my 
episcopal  brethren,  are  in  any  way  condemned  by  the 
Articles  and  formularies  of  the  Church,  and  having  already 

'  This  is  very  doubtful,  even  on  the  supposition  that  these  points  were 
law.    But  they  have  been  set  aside  on  appeal  ;  and  the  inquiry,  therefore,  -f 
is  superfluous. 


1 82  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

entered  into  a  full  explanation  on  all  those  points  on  which 
you  expressed  objection  to  my  teaching  in  a  letter  which  (I 
presume)  has  been  laid  before  the  Bishops  assembled  to 
discuss  my  book,  I  feel  that  I  should  place  myself  in  a 
false  position,  if  I  should  consent  to  be  convened  before  a 
number  of  Bishops  in  the  way  proposed,  which  would,  in 
fact,  amount  to  a  recognition  of  their  right  to  interrogate 
me. 

"  '  Nevertheless,  as  I  have  said,  I  shall  be  most  glad  to  meet 
singly  and  privately  with  any  Bishop  who — either  from  a 
sense  of  duty  to  the  Church  and  to  what  he  believes  to  be 
the  truth,  or  from  a  feeling  of  charity  towards  a  brother 
whom  he  wishes  to  '  recover,' — Avould  be  willing  to  meet  and 
discuss  with  me  any  of  the  questions  I  raised  in  the 
Comvientary.  It  seems  to  me  that  this  course  will  be 
most  truly  in  accordance  with  the  Scriptural  rule  to  which 
your  letter  refers. 

"  '  I  was  wholly  unaware  that  Bishop  Claughton  had  joined  in 
the  condemnation  of  my  book  [though  I  knew  that  he  did 
not  agree  with  some  of  my  views]  ;  and  certainly  from  his 
letters  to  myself  I  should  never  have  inferred  it. 

" '  The  only  pain  I  feel  is  that  of  causing  to  yourself  so  much 
anxiety  and  grief  in  addition  to  your  other  vexations.  But 
this  God  lays  upon  you  (and  upon  me  also)  in  the  path 
of  duty.' 

"  (v.)  At  the  end  of  three  weeks,  I  received  this  note  from  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown,  dated  September  17,  1S62  : — 

" '  I  think  I  ought  to  tell  you  that  the  dear  good  Bishop  of 
St.  Asaph  has  expressed  a  readiness  to  discuss  your 
views  with  you,  if  you  choose  to  visit  him  with  a  view 
to  that  purpose,  and  that,  although  I  have  no  commission 
from  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  to  say  so,  I  cannot  help  feeling 
that  he  would  be  ready  to  do  the  same.  I  cannot  tell  you 
how  deeply  I  grieve  over  the  case.' 

"  As  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  must  have  discussed  the  whole 
matter  with  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  and  '  had  no  commission 
from  him '  to  say  that  he  would  be  willing  to  see  me,  of 


1 862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       183 


course  the  latter  portion  of  the  above  note  had  no  meaning 
for  me  under  the  existing  circumstances.  For  the  Bishop 
of  St.  Asaph  I  have  the  deepest  esteem  and  respect,  and, 
perhaps,  I  ought  to  have  gone  to  him  for  the  purpose.  But 
I  was  in  London,  he  in  Wales  ;  and  I  hardly  felt  that  with 
a  Prelate  of  his  advanced  years  a  discussion  upon  my  Coin- 
vientary  would  be  likely  to  lead  to  any  practical  result,  and 
I  had  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  had  studied  at  all  the 
criticism  of  the  Pentateuch.  To  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's 
[Thirlwall],  whom  I  myself  mentioned  to  Bishop  Gray,  and 
whose  learning  might,  indeed,  have  been  profitably  con- 
sulted by  us,  my  proposal,  as  his  lordship  has  informed  me, 
was  never  in  any  way  communicated.  The  fact  was,  as  I 
believe,  and  as  the  above  correspondence,  I  think,  will 
sufficiently  evidence,  that  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  was 
determined  from  the  first  to  bring  me  to  account,  if  possible, 
in  some  form  or  other,  for  my  book  on  the  Romans,  which, 
though  containing,  as  I  maintain,  no  single  statement  at 
variance  with  the  Articles  and  formularies,  was  yet  very 
strongly  condemned  by  himself  and  others,  holding  extreme 
views  in  the  Church  on  either  side,  both  in  England  and  in 
South  Africa.  If  I  had  consented  to  be  thus  '  convened,'  no 
doubt  the  act  would  have  been  quoted,  as  my  private  letters 
have  been,  to  show  that  I  had  recognised  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  Metropolitan." 

Had  the  Bishop  under  these  circumstances  accepted  the 
invitation,  he  would  either  have  betrayed  a  wonderful  sim- 
plicity in  running  his  head  into  the  noose  prepared  for  him, 
or,  if  he  saw  the  snare,  would  have  grossly  failed  in  his  duty. 
Possibly  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  in  acting  on  this  ingeniously 
arranged  plan,  may  have  counted  on  the  Bishop  of  Natal's 
-simplicity  and  earnestness  as  likely  to  blind  him  to  the 
motive  and  the  purpose  which  prompted  it.  The  attitude 
of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  in  this  singular  correspond- 
ence is  significant  of  his  whole  bearing  through  all  the 
incidents  of  the  coming  year.     From  first  to  last  it   is  that 


1 84  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

of  the  infallible  ecclesiastic  towards  one  whom  he  calls  a 
brother,  but  who,  come  what  may,  must  be  proved  to  be  in 
the  wrong.  Had  there  been,  in  anything  that  he  said  or 
wrote,  the  faintest  admission  that  he  himself  might  possibly 
turn  out  to  be  mistaken,  the  case  would  have  been  altered. 
But  any  such  admission  is  implicitly  held  to  be  equivalent  to 
a  rejection  of  all  faith  in  God.  He  and  the  Bishops  who 
were  acting  with  him  had  resolved  on  taking  "the  most 
Christian  course,"  and  this  course  imposed  on  them  simply 
the  duty  of  striving  to  convince  the  Bishop  of  Natal  that  he 
was  "  in  error." 

Six  years  later  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  felt  himself  called 
upon  to  say  something  in  reply  to  Lord  Houghton,  who  in 
the  House  of  Lords  had  expressed  the  opinion  that  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  had  not  been  met  generally  with  feelings  of 
kindness  and  brotherly  friendship.  The  fact,  he  declared,  was 
as  diametrically  opposite  to  Lord  Houghton's  statement  as 
it  could  possibly  be. 

"  Dr.  Colenso  had  received  private  remonstrances,  brotherly 
counsel,  the  tenderest  and  kindest  counsel,  from  his  seniors 
at  home  ;  and  such  counsel  had  led  him  only  to  some  new 
outbreak  of  violence." 

If  these  words  meant  anything,  they  meant  that  Bishop 
Colenso  had  repeatedly  received  kind  remonstrances  from 
his  episcopal  brethren  at  home,  to  all  of  which  he  had 
turned  a  deaf  ear.  What  these  kind  remonstrances  and 
tender  counsels  were,  we  have  seen  in  part  already.  The 
next  step  of  the  majority  of  the  Bishops,  after  the  publication 
of  Dr.  Colenso's  first  volume,  was  to  send  him  a  circular 
letter  calling  upon  him  to  resign  his  see  ;  and  to  this  he 
returned  a  reply,  together  with  the  following  letter  to  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbur}- : — 


1863.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       i8s 


''March  5,  1863. 

"  My  Lord  Archbishop, 

"  I  beg  to  inclose  my  reply  to  the  address  which  has  been 
forwarded  to  me  by  your  Grace  from  the  Archbishops  and 
Bishops  of  the  Church  of  England. 

"  I  share  very  deeply  in  your  Grace's  expression  of  regret  that 
your  first  act  of  intercourse  with  me  should  have  been  of  this 
character.  And  I  am  painfully  sensible  of  the  fact  that 
ever  since  my  landing  in  this  country — with  the  exception 
of  one  letter  from  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  more  than  six 
months  ago,  and  a  message  from  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
to  the  effect  that  the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph  had  expressed  a 
readiness  to  discuss  my  views  (upon  the  Romans)  with  me, 
if  I  chose  to  visit  him  for  that  purpose — not  a  single  ex- 
pression of  sympathy  or  brotherly  kindness  has  reached 
me  from  any  one  of  my  spiritual  brethren  in  England  or 
Ireland,  though  it  was  well  known  that  I  was  suffering 
under  great  mental  trial  and  perplexity. 

"  I  am,  &c., 

"J.  W.  Natal." 

On  the  same  day,  at  his  wish,  "  expressed  through  a  mutual 
friend,"  he  had  an  interview  with  the  Bishop  of  London  ;  but, 
although  he  felt  Dr.  Tait's  courtesy  and  kindness,  the  latter 
offered  nothing  in  the  form  of  either  advice  or  remonstrance. 
To  the  preceding  letter,  however,  he  received  from  the  Arch- 
bishop the  following  reply  : — 

"  Lambeth  Palace,  March  6,  1863. 
"Mv  Lord, 

"  I  beg  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your  answer  to  the 
address  of  the  Bishops,  which  I  will  cause  to  be  forwarded 
to  all  the  subscribers  to  that  address. 

"  In  reference  to  your  remark  that  since  your  landing  not  a 
single  expression  of  sympathy  or  brotherly  kindness  from 
any  of  your  episcopal  brethren  had  reached  you,  I  feel  it  due 
to  myself  to  observe  that    I   believed   that  the  Bishop  of 


1 86  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  C  GLEN  SO.  chap.  v. 

Capetown  had  intimated  to  you  my  willingness  to  hold  an 
amicable  conference  with  you  on  the  painful  subject  of  your 
publications  ;  but  I  understood  that  you  declined  all  such 
intercourse. 

""  Then  I  must  in  Christian  candour  and  sincerity  state  that  I 
did  feel  that  the  tone  and  spirit  of  your  writings,  irrespective 
of  the  matter,  were  such  as  rather  to  repel  than  invite 
friendly  intercourse. 

■"  I  can  with  the  greatest  truth  assure  you  that  I  feel  very 
deeply  for  what  I  must  consider  your  very  unhappy  posi- 
tion ;  and  it  will  be  my  constant  prayer  that  you  may  have 
grace  to  perceive  the  peril  in  which  you  stand,  and  retrace 
your  steps  before  it  be  too  late. 

"  I  am,  my  Lord, 
"  Your  faithful  friend  and  brother  in  Christ, 

"C.  T.  Cantuar." 

Like  Bishop  Gray,  Archbishop  Longley  addresses  Dr. 
•Colenso  as  a  man  who  has  been  not  merely  accused  but  tried 
and  condemned.  There  is  not  the  faintest  hinting  that,  even 
if  he  were  condemned  in  his  archi-episcopal  Court  of  Arches, 
the  judgement  might  be  reversed  by  the  highest  Court  of 
Appeal.  The  reckless  assurances  of  his  present  peril  and  his 
future  vain  regret  are  proofs,  at  least,  of  complete  lack  of 
the  judicial  sense.  To  this  letter  the  Bishop  sent  the  following 
answer : — 

'^  March  lo,  1863. 

"  My  Lord  Archbishop, 

""  I  beg  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your  Grace's  reply  to 
my  former  letter.  I  am  sorry  that  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
did  not  in  any  way  intimate  to  me  your  Grace's  '  willing- 
ness to  hold  an  amicable  conference  with  me  on  the  subject 
of  [my]  publications.'  I  should  at  once  have  gladly  availed 
myself  of  such  an  intimation  ;  nor  have  I  ever  given  him 
any  reason  for  saying  that  I  '  declined  all  such  intercourse.' 
On  the  contrary,  I  wrote  to  him  on  August  27  to  say  that 


r863.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       187 

'  I  should  be  most  glad  to  meet,  singly  and  privately,  with 
any  Bishop  who — either  from  a  sense  of  duty  to  the  Church 
and  to  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth,  or  from  a  feeling 
of  charity  towards  a  brother  whom  he  wished  to  recover — 
would  be  willing  to  meet  and  discuss  with  me  any  of  the 
questions  raised  in  my  Coiiiuientary!  But  the  Bishop  of 
Capetown  was  anxious  to  bring  me  before  a  number  of 
Bishops, — in  other  words,  to  '  convene '  me, — and  to  that, 
and  that  only,  I  objected.  Your  Grace  will  perceive  that 
the  above  was  written  two  montJis  before  my  Part  I.  on  the 
Pentateuch  was  published.  And  I  had  been  in  England 
nearly  three  months  before  I  had  published  anything  to 
which  I  can  suppose  your  Grace  to  refer  when  you  say  that 
*  the  tone  and  spirit  of  [my]  writings  were  such  as  rather  to 
repel  than  to  invite  friendly  intercourse.'  I  shall  very  much 
regret  if  there  is  anything  in  my  First  Part  to  which  such 
language  can  justly  apply.  I  cannot  doubt  that  I  might 
have  profited  much  by  friendly  counsel  from  some,  at  least, 
of  my  episcopal  brethren,  if  any  such  had  been  offered. 
,\nd  on  this  account  alone  I  must  especially  regret  the 
complete  state  of  isolation  in  which  I  have  been  left  by 
them  upon  returning  to  my  native  land  after  some  years  of 
labour  in  the  missionary  field. 

"  Your  Grace  speaks  of  my  '  unhappy  position.'  Conscious 
that  I  am  striving  by  God's  help  to  do  my  duty  as  a 
servant  of  the  Truth,  I  cannot  deem  my  position  'unhappy,' 
however  at  times  my  faith  and  hope  and  patience  may  be 
tried.  Rather,  I  bless  God  for  the  peace  which  He  has 
granted  me  inward]}',  while  the  roar  of  tongues  has  been 
raging  without. 

^  And  I  pray  that  He  may  grant  me  grace  to  correct  any 
faults  which  may  be  justly  held  to  disfigure  my  writings, 
and  to  be  steadfast  to  the  end,  striving  ever  to  speak  the 
truth  in  love. 

"  I  am,  my  Lord  Archbishop, 
"  Your  Grace's  very  faithful  and  obedient  servant, 

"J.  W.  Natal." 


1 88  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  v. 

Writing  on  September  i,  1868,  the  Bishop  says  : — 

"  From  that  time  to  this  not  a  single  word  of  '  sympath}-,' 
'  brotherly  counsel,'  or  '  private  remonstrance  '  of  any  kind 
has  reached  me  from  any  one  of  my  seniors  at  home.  I  am 
not  now  complaining  of  this.     I  only  state  the  fact." 

Among  the  friends  to  whom  the  Bishop  soon  after  his 
landing  in  England  submitted  the  rough  draft  of  his  first 
criticisms  on  the  Pentateuch  was  Mr.  Maurice,  to  whom,  at  a 
time  when  the  voices  of  the  "  religious  world "  were  loudly 
raised  against  him,  the  Bishop  had  dedicated  the  little  volume 
of  Sermons  preached  at  Forncett.^  To  his  amazement,  instead 
of  counsel  or  comfort,  he  received  from  this  honoured  friend 
little  more  than  denunciation.  The  correspondence  which 
ensued  has  unhappily  been  imperfectly  preserved  ;  but  enough 
remains  to  show  the  part  taken  by  both  in  this  momentous 
discussion.  In  Mr.  Maurice's  letters  there  may  be  (I  venture 
to  say  that  there  is)  much  to  regret :  in  those  of  the  Bishop 
there  is  not  one  word  for  which  either  apology  or  excuse  can 
be  needed. 

To  THE  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice. 

"6,  Crescent,  Blackfriars, 
"  September  4,  1862. 

"  My  dear  Friend, 

I  need  hardly  say  that  your  letter  has  seriously  distressed 
me.  I  am  pained,  in  the  first  place,  to  think  that  you 
should  suppose  I  could  be  guilty  of  so  much  ingratitude 
and  insolence  as  to  suggest  that  yoit  were  clinging  to 
orthodox  views  merely  because  they  ivere  ortJiodox.  Such 
a  thought  could  never  have  entered  my  mind,  or  been 
expressed  by  my  pen.  I  am  pained  also — very  much 
pained — by  your  references  to  those  blessed  ones  who  have 
been  taken  to  their  rest.  I  have  a  mother,  and  a  sister, 
and  a  brother,  who,  like  your  dear  sister,  my  most  true 
and  honoured  friend,  have  died  in  the  belief  of  those 
^  See  p.  47. 


jS62.     preparations  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       1S9 

matters,  which  I  myself  beheved,  till  God  has  led  me  in  his 
Providence  to  believe  otherwise.  Can  you  suppose  that 
I  have  not  daily  and  hourly  beloved  forms  such  as  these 
before  my  eyes — that  I  should  pursue  the  path  I  am  now 
taking,  if  I  did  not  think  and  most  entirely  believe  that 
they  from  their  higher  places  look  down  and  breathe  their 
blessing  upon  my  work,  while  struggling  here  on  earth — 
(amidst  much  infirmity  and  every  kind  of  temptation  to 
give  up  the  struggle  and  be  content  to  lie) — to  be  true 
to  the  Living  God  and  His  truth  ?  The  reproaches  which 
you  have,  I  am  sure  in  haste,  uttered  with  reference  to  the 
dear  departed,  and  the  employment  of  my  native  boy,  lose 
all  their  sting  with  me,  except  as  coming  from  you,  if  I 
believe  that  in  this  book  I  am  doing  that  which  your  sister 
would  have  me  to  do,  which  I  was  really  sent  to  Natal  to 
do,  which  our  Church  itself,  that  protests  against  all  manner 
of  lies,  would  have  me  do,  to  my  life's  end. 

"  In  point  of  fact,  such  a  book  as  this  is,  by  the  recent 
judgement,  strictly  within  the  licence  given  to  a  clergyman 
of  the  Church  of  England.  You  say  that  I  shall  be  carried 
on  beyond  my  present  views.  I  admit  that  that  is  possible. 
But  I  call  on  such  as  yourself  to  help  to  stay  me  and 
a  multitude  of  others,  not  by  denouncing  a  few  hasty  ex- 
pressions, such  as  '  fiction  '  (a  word  which  obviously  was 
ill-chosen,  and  does  not  properly  express  my  meaning), 
'  reasoning  person,'  &c.  (all  of  which  I  shall  do  my  best  to 
expunge  from  my  book,  and  I  thank  }'ou  sincerely  for 
correction  of  this  fault),  but  by  seriously  examining  into 
the  truth  of  the  main  argument.  Is  it  true,  or  is  it  not 
true,  that  the  Pentateuch  in  a  number  of  places  distinctly 
maintains  that  there  were  600,000  warriors  in  the  wilderness, 
yet  in  other  places  distinctly  shows  that  there  could  not 
have  been  a  hundredth  part  of  that  number  } 

"  But,  my  dear  friend,  you  write  as  if  I  had  no  fear  of  God, 
no  faith  or  living  hope,  no  desire,  however  weak,  to  serve 
Him.  God  only  knows  how  unworthy  I  am  to  be  called 
His  servant,  much  more  His  child  ;  and  yet  I  trust  in  His 
mercy.     But  others  there  are  whom  you  yourself  would 


I90  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

regard  with  more  charitable  thoughts,  and  who  do  not 
shrink,  as  you  have  done,  from  the  views  which  I  have 
expressed.  I  do  not  think  you  would  class  Dr.  Davidson 
with  the  band  of  impious  unbelievers.  I  breakfasted  yes- 
terday with  Canon  Stanley,  and  had  much  interesting  talk 
with  him  upon  the  matters  discussed  in  my  book.  Why 
should  you  say  that  they,  or  that  even  I,  tindervahie  the 
Bible,  because  we  do  not  adopt  the  same  views  as  yourself 
with  respect  to  its  historical  value  and  the  age  and  manner 
of  its  composition  .''  Your  remarks  will  certainly  lead  me 
to  insert  a  few  passages  to  save  me  from  such  miscon- 
struction as  you  have  put  upon  some  of  my  expressions. 
I  told  you  that  the  book  was  a  mere  first  proof,  and  had 
many  faults  which  would  be  removed  before  it  was  pub- 
lished. But  your  argument  seems  mainly  to  be  based  on 
these  defects  in  my  style.  You  do  not  so  much  as  touch 
one  point  in  the  reasoning. 
"  I  am  afraid  that  it  would  be  useless  for  me  to  come  to  you 
at  this  time.  Please  excuse  me  now,  I  shall  yet  hope  to 
see  you  when  you  return  to  London.  Meanwhile,  may  God 
have  us  both  in  His  holy  keeping. 

"  Ever  yours  affectionately, 

"J.  W.  Natal. 

"  P.S. — I  have  again  perused  and  considered  your  letter  ;  and 
while  most  heartily  thanking  you  for  your  great  kindness  in 
writing  it,  I  am  constrained  to  say  that  the  more  I  consider 
it,  the  more  I  feel  your  words — very  many  of  them — to  be 
harsh  and  unjust.  You  have  only  a  fraction  of  my  book. 
You  do  not  know  what  I  should  say  of  the  Bible  itself 
before  I  close  the  argument." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  6,  Crescent,  Blackfriars, 
"  Septe?ttber  5,  1862. 

"  I  must  say  a  few  words  more  in  reference  to  that  part  of 
your  letter  in  which  you  speak  of  Ew^ald  and  Bleek.  With 
reference  to  the  former,  Dr.  W.  Bleek,  when  he  sent  me  his 


lS62.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       191 

father's  posthumous  work,  wrote,  'You  will  see  that  your 
estimate  of  Ewald  pretty  nearly  agrees  with  my  father's', 
as  you  would  also  find  if  you  read  Bleek's  last  work. 
Ewald,  in  fact,  is  far  wilder  in  his  hypotheses  and  far 
more  rash  in  his  conclusions  than  I  should  wish  to  be. 
It  is  not  because  he  is  too  conservative  that  I  cannot  agree 
with  him,  but  just  for  the  very  contrary.  Nevertheless,  I 
had  long  ago  struck  out  from  my  book  every  word  that 
might  give  unnecessary  pain  to  a  great  and  good  man, 
though  I  do  not  at  all  doubt  that  what  I  have  said  of  him, 
supported  as  it  is  by  Bleek's  calm  judgment,  is  perfectly 

true 

"  With  regard  to  the  native  boy,  it  is  right  perhaps  that  I 
should  say  that  the  Natal  Government  granted  me  ^^^300 
per  annum,  without  any  reference  to  religion,  strictly  for 
industrial  purposes, — that  I  had  to  find  industrial  employ- 
ment for  my  printing  boy, — that  I  gave  him  what  he  very 
much  needed  and  the  Government  desired,  practice  in 
printing  from  EnglisJi  copy,  under  my  own  surveillance,  by 
which  he  is  now  fitted  to  take  work  in  an  English  printing- 
office, — and  that  I  was  glad  of  the  opportunity  of  so  doing, 
and  having  matter,  which  you  deem  so  dangerous,  privately 
printed  by  one  who  could  not  understand  what  he  composed, 
instead  of  by  an  English  printer." 

To   THE   SAME, 

"  London,  Scpte7nbcr  6,  1S62. 

"  I  said,  on  p.  159  [of  the  proof],  '  It  seems  impossible  that  any 
reasoning  person,  '  if  lie  only  considers  the  facts  ivhicJi  have 
already  been  laid  before  him,     .     .     .     .'     &c. 

''  I  do  not  believe  that  you  have  considered  these  facts.  All 
your  expressions  imply  that  you  have  merely  glanced  at 
the  matter,  and  not  really  weighed  the  force  of  any  of  my 
arguments.  It  is  not  that  I  doubt  the  exactness  ot  the 
number  600,000  that  I  cannot  receive  the  Pentateuch  as 
historical,  or  teach  others  to  do  so.  And,  of  course,  I 
could  retort — if  that  were  sccml}-  from  me  to  one  whom  I 


192  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  v 

shall  ever  revere — that  those  who  will  not  look  at  the  plain 
facts  of  the  case,  will  employ  no  argument  of  reason,  but 
simple  denunciation,  to  check  a  work  which  may  he,  and  I 
verily  believe  is,  from  God,  the  God  of  Truth,  may  themselves 
one  day  deeply  regret  the  course  which  they  have  taken. 

■"  Stanley  has  seen  my  book  with  all  its  faults,  and  so  have 
others,  whose  piety  and  charity  you  would  respect  ;  and  yet 
not  one  of  them  has  taken  that  view  either  of  the  facts  of 
the  case,  or  of  my  duty  under  the  circumstances,  which  you 
have  done.  Is  it  not  possible  that  you  may  be  mistaken  in 
your  judgement .-'  I  will  quote  a  few  words  from  a  letter 
which  I  have  this  moment  received  from  Stanley.  You  will 
see  that  he  does  not  think  it  necessary  to  condemn  either 
my  purpose  or  my  work  as  you  do.  '  I  have  written  this 
abruptly '  [he  says]  '  and  critically.  But  do  not  suppose 
me  insensible  either  to  the  vast  labour  or  the  painful  efforts 
which  this  work  must  have  cost  you.  It  is  my  full  con- 
sciousness of  this  which  renders  me  so  anxious  that  no  in- 
discretion of  expression  or  exaggeration  of  argument  should 
lead  off  the  public  scent  from  your  real  meaning  and 
intention.' 

■"  But  it  is  useless  in  your  present  frame  of  mind  to  argue 
upon  the  matter.  May  the  great  Being,  whom  we  both 
desire  to  serve,  be  our  guide  and  grant  us  mercifully  His 
blessing." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  London,  September  8,  1 862. 

"  My  Dear  Friend, 
^'  I  think  you  will  feel  upon  consideration  that  there  is  not  a 
shadow  of  real  ground  for  reproach  ^  against  me  with  refer- 
ence to   the  Mission  Press,  when  you  are  made  aware  of 
the  following  facts  : — 

(i)  The  printing  of  my  books  does  not  cost  the  Mission 
Fund  one  penny,  unless  it  be  supposed  that  the  iron  press 
itself  has  been  worn  by  use.  It  would  have  been  more 
injured  by  rust  if  it  had  not  been  used. 

^  In  a  later  letter  Mr.  Maurice  withdrew  this  reproach. 


1 862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       193 

"  (2)   Half  was  printed  at  my  own  expense  by  a  town  printer. 

"  (3)  The  rest  was  printed  with  means  given  me  by  the  Govern- 
ment for  the  express  purpose  of  training  native  youths  in 
industrial  work  of  any  kind,  without  any  reference  to  religion. 

"  (4)  I  had  taught  my  boy  to  print  well  from  Zulu  MS.  ;  but 
I  had  no  Zulu  MS.  in  hand  to  give  him. 

"  (5)  To  carry  out  the  Governor's  wishes  and  make  him  useful 
to  the  colony  at  large,  with  a  view  to  which  the  Govern- 
ment money  was  given,  it  was  necessary  that  he  should  be 
able  to  print  from  English  MS. — which  he  had  never  yet 
attempted  to  do. 

"  (6)  I  taught  him  to  do  this  by  giving  him  my  MS.,  the  only 
means  I  had  of  employing  him  at  all. 

"  (7)  As,  though  knowing  a  little  English,  he  was  utterly 
unable  to  follow  the  argument  of  my  book  or  understand  its 
real  meaning,  it  was  as  good  employment  as  I  could  have 
found  for  him,  and  has,  in  fact,  made  a  man  of  him. 

"  (8)  In  employing  him  about  what  you  would  consider  the 
most  deadly  part  of  my  book,  I  did  what  I  could  to  pre- 
vent any  injury  being  done  through  the  employment  of 
Europeans. 

"  (9)  These  few  copies  were  printed  not  for  general  circulation, 
nor  for  sale,  but  to  be  laid  before  Heads  of  the  Church  and 
others  eminent  for  piety  and  ability,  who  might  prevent 
altogether,  perhaps,  the  publication  of  the  work. 

"(10)  Lastly,  a  friend  writes,  as  it  seems  to  me,  very  justly  : 
'  If  you  are  right,  you  are  not  less,  but  more,  orthodox  than 
Hengstenberg,  than  Paley,  than  myself 

"  I  believe  that  in  the  main  I  avi  right.  Not  one,  at  least,  of 
my  other  friends,  whom  I  have  consulted  (though  they  have 
given  me  many  kind  and  judicious  hints,  and  have  urged 
me  to  modify  some  of  the  strong  expressions  of  my  rough 
draft)  have  expressed  a  single  doubt  as  to  the  general 
correctness  of  the  argument  in  my  book,  or  as  to  my  duty 
to  '  act,'  as  you  say,  '  upon  the  Truth  which  I  see,  even 
though  it  does  involve  a  very  great  sacrifice  of  my  own 
will.'  My  own  will  would  have  me  to  be  a  paltry  sneaking 
coward  who,  seeing  the  truth,  would  for  the  sake  of  avoiding 
VOL.  I.  o 


194  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

reproach  and  calumny  of  every  kind,  and  bitter  censures 
from  one  at  least  of  my  most  revered  and  valued  friends — 
for  the  sake  of  living  comfortably  and  quietly,  in  honour  and 
comparative  wealth — consent  to  '  suppress '  that  truth  which 
I  see  so  plainly,  and  leave  brave  good  men  like  Davidson 
and  others  to  bear  all  alone  the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day. 
May  the  good  Spirit  of  God  not  leave  me  to  myself  at  any 
moment  for  this :  but  j/<??/r  letters  are  a  sore  temptation— 
at  least,  they  would  be,  did  I  not  perceive  that  you  appeal 
only  to  my  feelings  and  my  pride,  not  to  my  reason. 
"  P.S. — According  to  _;F^//r  reasoning,  I  myself  have  committed 
a  crime  in  spending  my  time  in  writing  such  a  book,  since, 
according  to  your  view,  I  was  not  '  sent  out,' — the  Colonial 
Bishoprics  Fund  was  not 'meant' — for  such  purposes.  I, 
indeed,  think  differently.  I  believe  that  I  was  sent  out  to 
speak  the  truth, — that  our  Protestant  Church  will  have  us 
speak  the  truth  at  all  cost,  and  will  not  in  her  principles — ■ 
however,  for  the  moment,  she  may  seem  by  the  letter  of  the 
law  to  do  otherwise — countenance  any  kind  of  lie,  whether 
by  perversion  or  suppression  of  the  truth.  But  see  how  the 
very  same  argument  might  be  turned  by  an  enemy — not 
certainly  by  .a  friend — against  yourself.  Many  of  the 
doctrines  which  you  preach — though,  as  you  believe,  and  as 
I  believe,  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  Church  of 
England,  however  seemingly  at  variance  with  the  latter — 
are  certainly  not  considered  by  the  mass  of  our  fellow- 
Churchmen,  and  by  the  judge  administering  the  law  of  the 
Church,  as  being  in  accordance  with  her  teaching.  You  and 
I  were  not  '  sent,'  it  might  be  said,  to  preach  such  doctrines  : 
we  have  no  right  to  eat  the  bread  of  the  Church,  while  we 
teach  counter  to  her  teaching.  Of  course,  %ve  do  not  believe 
that  we  are  doing  wrong ;  but  the  great  body  of  the 
Church,  undoubtedly,  does  condemn  us.  And  I  suppose 
there  would  be  found  quite  as  many  ready  to  support  my 
view  o'n  the  Pentateuch,  including  men  of  unquestionable 
piety  and  ability,  as  there  are  who  would  agree  with  the 
views  which  you  and  I  have  expressed  on  the  subject  of 
Eternal  Punishment.    Certainly,  till  Lushington's  judgement 


PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       195 


was  delivered,  I  did  feel  a  great  difficulty  about  the  words 
in  the  Ordination  Service  of  Deacons.    The  judgement,  and 
Stephen's    reasoning,  have  removed  that  difficulty.     I  sec 
that  we  cannot  mean  to  express  '  unfeigned  belief  in  the 
historical  veracity  of  the  story  of  the  Exodus  any  more  than 
in  the  historical  veracity  of  Job  or  the  Song  of  Solomon. 
The  passages  in  my  preface,  which  refer  to  that  Ordination 
answer,  of  course,  are  now  without  point.     And,  indeed,  the 
whole  preface  requires,  I  find,  to  be  remodelled,  now  that  I 
know  the  present  state  of  feeling  in   England.     But  what 
you  appear  to  me  to  have  done  is  to  have  rushed  at  once  to 
conclusions,  as  a  necessary  consequence  of  my  view  of  the 
Pentateuch,  which  do  not  at  all  follow  from  it  necessarily , 
and  to  which  I  certainly  at  present  do   not   intend  to  com- 
mit myself.      As  I  have  said   before,  most  truly  glad  and 
rejoiced    should    I    be,    if   the    whole    fabric    of   my    book 
should   be    swept    away  by   true  and  powerful    reasoning  ; 
and  then   all  the  conclusions,  which   may  seem   to  you  to 
follow    from    it,   and    some   of  which,   perhaps,  may  really 
follow  from  it,  would  be  swept  away  also." 

The  Bishop,  no  doubt,  was  absolutely  sincere  in  wishing 
that  his  arguments  and  conclusions  should  be  decisively  re- 
futed and  convincingly  proved  to  be  worthless  and  untenable. 
But  he  seems  to  have  forgotten  for  the  moment,  or  perhaps 
he  had  not  yet  come  to  see,  that,  if  such  should  be  the  case, 
an  enormous  power  would  be  given  to  the  system  of  popular 
tradition  which  upholds  the  fetish-worship  of  bibliolaters. 

To  THE  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice. 

"  FOWEY,  September  11,  1862. 
"  I  most  certainly  believe  with  you  that  the  Jehovah,  the  I 
AM,  is  the  ground  of  all  that  is  true  and  good,  in  individuals 
and  nations.^  I  believe  also  that  the  name  was  revealed 
from  above  to  man, — whether  to  Samuel  or  to  some  one 
else.  We  differ  on  this  point  only,  as  it  seems  to  me,  in 
this,  that  I  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  believe  that  it  was 

'  See  Life  of  F.  D.  Maurice,  ii.  p.  510. 

O  2 


196  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

revealed  to  Moses  at  the  bush  in  the  way  described  in 
Exodus  iii.,  and  that  my  critical  examination  of  the  story 
of  the  Exodus  has  convinced  me  that  it  is  not  historically 
true.  But  supposing  it  to  be  true  (as  I  conjecture,  and  am  not 
far  from  believing)  that  it  was  first  revealed  to  the  inner 
consciousness  of  Samuel  and  by  him  communicated  in 
Exodus  iii.,  it  does  not  at  all  follow  in  my  own  judgement,  and 
in  that  of  others  whom  I  have  consulted,  that  Samuel  must 
have  been  a  liar  and  deceiver.  I  grant  that  the  use  of  the 
word  '  fiction,'  as  it  is  commonly  understood,  might  impl}- 
this  ;  but  I  did  not  intend  to  imply  it,  and  used  the  word, 
as  the  best  I  could  think  of,  to  imply  '  not  real,'  '  not 
historically  true.'  One  of  my  friends  writes,  objecting  to 
the  word,  and  adding,  '  Many  traditionary  facts  must  be 
imbedded  in  the  annalist's  conglomerate  ;  and  it  will  not 
do  to  beg  the  question  of  the  annalist's  honesty  by  the  use 
of  any  word  implying  fraud.  Perhaps  an  imagination  of  an 
exalted  order  was  at  work  ;  and  the  annalist  may  have  had 
no  more  consciousness  of  wrong  or  historical  deception 
than  Homer  had,  or  the  early  Roman  annalists.' 
"  I  am  sorry  that  any  of  my  expressions  have  been  such  as  to 
leave  you  under  the  impression  that  I  thought  con- 
temptuously or  arrogantly  of  those  whose  views  and 
conclusions  do  not  agree  with  my  own.  By  such  ex- 
pressions I  have  not  done  justice  to  myself ;  but  if  I  know 
myself,  I  have  no  such  feelings.  For  Hengstenberg's  works, 
certainly,  I  do  feel  something  like  contempt,  for  his  argu- 
ments are  often  dishonest — I  can  use  no  milder  term, — and 
that  with  a  prodigious  affectation  of  honesty  and  censure  of 
others  as  suppressing  the  truth  from  interested  motives. 
But  I  have  no  such  sentiments  with  regard  to  any  one  else 
whose  opinions  conflict  with  my  own.  And  I  shall  en- 
deavour to  mend  my  faulty  language.  I  am  sure  that  your 
words  are  those  of  a  friend,  and  faithfully  meant.  I  receive 
them  as  such. 

"  Believe  me  to  be, 

"  Ever  yours  affectionately, 

"J.  W.  Natal." 


1 862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       197 

It  is  not  easy  to  understand  how  a  man  like  Mr.  Maurice 
could  read  such  a  series  of  letters  as  those  which  were 
addressed  to  him  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal  in  the  memorable 
September  of  1862  without  pausing  to  think  that  his  own 
view  of  the  matter  might  perhaps  be  not  the  only  one  which 
might  legitimately  be  held.  But  it  can  scarcely  be  said  that 
on  this  subject  Mr.  Maurice  deliberated  at  all.  The  friends 
met,  it  seems,  early  in  September  ;  and  Mr.  Maurice,  we  are 
told,  gave  expression  to  his  thoughts  in  the  form,  "  Well,  I 
think  that  the  consciences  of  Englishmen  will  be  very  strongly 
impressed  with  the  feeling  that  you  ought  to  resign  your 
bishopric."  Such  is  the  report  of  Colonel  Maurice  in  his 
father's  Life}  and  there  is,  unhappily,  not  the  least  ground 
for  questioning  its  perfect  accuracy.  Colonel  Maurice  is 
undoubtedly  right  in  saying  that  his  father 

■'  drew  a  very  wide  distinction  between  the  duty  of  paying 
respect  to  men's  consciences,  to  the  sense  of  right  and 
wrong  developed  by  genuine  care  and  thought  upon  a 
question,  and  the  absolute  duty  of  disregarding  mere 
opinions,  the  things  that  men  glibly  repeat  after  their 
fugleman." 

But  inasmuch  as  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had  been  impelled  to 
his  task  solely  by  regard  to  the  instruction  offered  to  the 
poor,  the  ignorant,  the  helpless,  the  perplexed,  we  might 
suppose  that  the  consciences  of  Englishmen  would  rather  be 
impressed  with  the  need  of  reform  in  a  system  which  could 
be  upheld  only  by  falsehood.  If  the  mere  questioning  of 
historical  statements  in  the  Pentateuch  was  held  to  damage 
the  Church  of  England,  then  her  whole  system  must  surely 
demand  a  very  searching  scrutiny.  Allowing,  or  rather 
assuming,  as  Colonel  Maurice  admits,  that  Mr.  Maurice's 
position  was  unassailable,  and  therefore  that  at  least  to  him 

'  \'ol.  ii.  p.  422. 


198  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  v. 

the  unfairness  of  such  an  appeal  as  he  had  made  ought  to  be 
clear,  the  Bishop  replied  that  there  were  many  who  said  that 
he  had  no  business  to  retain  his  living.  The  fact  spoke  for 
itself.  This  language  had  been  for  years 'applied  to  men  of 
all  parties.  It  was  a  weapon  thrown  recklessly  in  every 
direction.  The  religious  press  and  those  who  paraded  a 
cynical  secularism  had  denounced  the  wickedness  of  Dr. 
Pusey  or  Mr.  Newman  or  other  Tractarian  leaders  for  not 
finding  their  proper  home  in  the  Roman  Church.  There  had 
been  broad  hints  that  the  Christianity  of  Dean  Stanley  or 
even  of  Dean  Milman  was  not  such  as  to  justify  them  in  the 
retention  of  their  deaneries  or  even  of  their  position  as  clergy- 
men in  'the  English  Church.  But  on  hearing  the  Bishop's 
words  Mr.  Maurice  instantly  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  charges  of  mercenariness  and  dishonesty  were  being  urged 
against  himself  in  particular,  and  he  answered  therefore  that 
if  any  supposed  him  to  profess  belief  in  the  Church's  creeds 
and  in  the  Bible  for  the  sake  of  the  money  which  he  got  from 
his  chapel,  such  a  scandal  called  for  his  immediate  resignation. 
He  wrote,  accordingly,  to  Mr.  Llewellyn  Davies,  in  a  strain 
which  showed  that  there  was  very  little  chance  of  sober 
reflexion  on  the  matters  with  which  he  was  professing 
to  deal. 

"  The  pain  which  Colenso's  book  has  caused  me,"  he  says,  "  is 
more  than  I  can  tell  you.  I  used  nearly  your  own  words, 
'  It  is  the  most  purely  negative  criticism  I  ever  read,'  in 
writing  to  him.  Our  correspondence  has  been  frequent, 
but  perfectly  unavailing.  He  seems  to  imagine  himself 
a  great  critic  and  discoverer  ;  and  I  am  afraid  he  has  met 
with  an  encouragement  which  will  do  him  unspeakable 
mischief  He  sa}'S  I  have  only  appealed  to  his  pride  in 
my  argument.     I   fancy  I  wounded  his  pride  ^  even  more 

^  We  might  be  pardoned  for  thinking  that  Mr.  Maurice  was  talking  at 
random.  The  Bishop  had  no  pride  to  wound  ;  he  was  shocked  at  such 
vehemence  from  one  whom  he  had  always  revered  and  loved. 


i862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       199 

than  I  ought.  I  appealed  to  his  love  of  truth.  I  asked 
him  whether  he  did  not  think  Samuel  must  have  been  a 
horrid  scoundrel  if  he  forged  a  story  about  the  I  AM 
speaking  to  Moses,  and  to  my  unspeakable  surprise  and 
terror  he  said,  '  No :  many  good  men  had  done  such 
things.  He  might  not  mean  more  than  ]\Iilton  meant.' 
He  even  threw  out  the  notion  that  the  Pentateuch  might 
be  a  poem  ;  and  when  I  said  that  to  a  person  who  had  ev^er 
asked  himself  what  a  poem  is  the  notion  was  simply 
ridiculous,  he  showed  that  his  idea  of  poetry  was  that 
it  is  something  which  is  not  historical.  And  his  idea  of 
history  is  that  it  is  a  branch  of  arithmetic.  I  agree  with 
you  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  say  to  what  point  of  disbelief 
he  may  go  ;  but  it  seems  to  me  just  as  likely,  with  his 
tolerance  of  pious  frauds,  that  he  may  end  in  Romanism 
and  accept  everything."  ^ 

We  shall  find  a  while  later  the  Bishop's  accusers  at  Capetown 
expressing  themselves  in  language  even  more  absurd  and 
extravagant  than  this.  It  is  enough  here  to  say  that  neither 
they  nor  Mr.  Maurice  were  in  the  least  aware  how  absolutely 
void  of  all  effect  such  language  is  on  the  minds  of  those  who 
have  honestly  worked  in  any  branch  of  human  history.  For 
such  students  it  soon  becomes  luminously  clear  that  negative 
conclusions  must  of  necessit}'  be  additions  to  our  positive 
knowledge  ;  that  there  are  many  subjects  which  admit  of  none 
but  purely  negative  criticism  ;  and  that  the  honesty  of 
chroniclers  or  other  writers  must  be  measured  by  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  age  in  which  they  lived.  No  stor>'  is 
forged,  unless  it  is  put  together  with  the  purpose  of  cheating 
and  deceiving  ;  and  the  Jews  are  not  the  only  people  amongst 
whom  the  practice  of  putting  forth  books  under  the  names  of 
thinkers  whose  reputation  might  secure  them  some  attention 
was  very  general,  if  not  universal.  There  is  scarcely  one 
illustrious  Greek  writer  whose  sanction  has  not  been  claimed 

^  Life  of  F.  D.  Maurice,  vol.  ii.  p.  423. 


200  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

for  a  mass  of  pseudonymous  literature.  This  literature  was 
not  designed  to  be  a  pious  fraud,  and  hence  it  never  carried 
with  it  the  reputation  for  falsehood.  Even  if  we  take  the 
supposition  that  the  book  of  the  law  found  in  the  time  of 
Josiah  was  a  book  recently  composed,  we  have  no  more 
warrant  for  applying  to  the  writer  or  writers  of  it  any  more 
than  to  John  Bunyan  the  charge  of  wilful  and  deliberate 
lying. 

The  question  is  so  important  that  it  becomes  necessary  to 
notice  more  at  length  the  expressions  used  by  Mr.  Maurice  in 
reference  to  it. 


"You  know,  of  course,"  he  writes  to  Mr.  Clark,  "this  business 
of  Colenso.  You  know  how  he  had  identified  himself  with 
me,  and  how  great  a  struggle  it  must  be  to  me  to  disclaim 
him,  especially  when  he  is  putting  himself  to  great  risk. 
Yet  I  think  him  so  utterly  wrong  that  I  must  do  it  at  all 
risks  to  him  or  to  me.  How  to  do  it,  and  yet  not  to  put 
myself  entirely  in  the  wrong  with  respect  to  him,  and  so  to 
injure  the  cause  of  God  far  more  than  myself,  has  been  a 
subject  of  earnest  thought  with  me.  It  has  obliged  me  to 
consider  my  whole  position  at  Vere  Street.  I  had  long 
perceived  that  that  was  put  in  jeopardy  by  the  recent 
decisions  in  Heath's  case  and  in  Wilson's  case.  I  had 
prepared  myself  for  a  prosecution,  and  had  determined  that 
when  it  came  I  would  not  go  into  the  court,  but  would 
rather  retire.  To  plead  by  help  of  an  ingenious  counsel 
for  permission  to  do  what  I  feel  I  must  do  to  fulfil  my  ordi- 
nation vows  seemed  to  me  mischievous.  But  I  had  meant 
to  wait  till  the  blow  came.  Now  I  see  very  clearly  that  I 
ought  to  anticipate  it.  If  I  give  up  Vere  Street,  stating 
my  reason  for  doing  so  very  fully  in  a  letter  to  my  congre- 
gation, I  can  distinguish  my  position  from  that  of  all  who 
wish  to  diminish  the  authority  of  the  Scripture.  I  can  show 
that  my  only  offence  is  that  of  adhering  too  literally  to  the 
words  of  the  Prayer-Book  and  Articles." 


1 


1 862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.      201 

Mr.  Maurice  was  absolutely  sincere ;  and  he  felt  not  a 
shadow  of  doubt  of  his  own  ability  to  trace  the  literal  mean- 
ing of  the  formularies  or  Articles  of  the  Church  of  England  ; 
but  we  shall  find  that  there  is  not  a  single  argument  urged  by 
him,  or  a  single  expression  cited  in  support  of  his  conclusions, 
to  which  the  accusers  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  at  Capetown 
have  not  ascribed  quite  another  sense.  Mr.  Maurice,  for  instance, 
laid  great  stress  on  the  withdrawal  of  the  Article  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  endless  torturing  of  the  impenitent.  To  Bishop 
Gray  and  his  partisans  this  fact  furnished  the  most  conclusive 
evidence  that  the  dogma  was  held  and  imposed  as  indubitable 
by  the  Church  of  England  as  by  the  Church  Catholic  in  all 
ages.  It  was  not  likely,  therefore,  that  on  the  purely  eccle- 
siastical or  sacerdotal  mind  his  resignation  of  Vere  Street 
Chapel  would  produce  any  impression  whatever.  Neverthe- 
less, he  had  no  hesitation  in  taking  this  step. 

*' Colenso's  act,"  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Kingsley  (October  1862), 
"  though  it  clinched  my  resolution  ....  only  showed  me 
what  would  have  been  best  at  all  events.  My  mind  has 
been  nearly  racked  this  vacation  at  the  thought  that  the 
whole  family  life  of  England  must  go  to  wreck  if  there  is 
not  some  witness  that  the  Father  of  all  is  not  a  destroyer. 
At  the  same  time  I  have  faith  and  hope,  at  times  most 
cheering  and  invigorating,  that  some  of  our  scientific  men 
and  our  secularists,  if  they  could  be  spoken  to  as  husbands 
and  fathers,  not  as  schoolmen,  might  pass  from  atheism  to 
the  most  cordial  belief.  Arguments  about  a  Creator  will 
fall  dead  upon  them.  A  message  from  a  Father  may  rouse 
them  to  life."  ^ 

Writing  to  his  friend  Arthur  Stanley  (October,  1862),  he 
speaks  of  himself  as  lying  open  to  the  suspicion  that  while  he 
partly  talked  of  the  Old  Testament  as  the  guide  to  all  moral 
and  political  wisdom,  he  partly  looked  upon  it,  with  Colenso, 
as  a  book  of  fictions  and  forgeries. 

'  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  428. 


202  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

"  The  coincidence  of  the  appearance  of  Colenso's  book  with 
the  re-hearing  of  Wilson's  case  has  determined  the  time  of 
my  retirement  from  Vere  Street."  ^ 

Mr.  Maurice  was,  happily,  brought  to  see  that  there  was  no 
reason  for  this  step  ;  and  he  did  not  resign.  Dr.  Stanley 
begged  him,  as  a  strong  personal  favour,  to  postpone  his 
decision  until  Dr.  Lushington's  recent  Judgment  in  the 
Williams-Wilson  case  had  been  reviewed  by  the  Privy 
Council ;  and  more  particularly  Mr.  Bunyon,  the  Bishop's 
brother-in-law,  had  insisted  that  if  he  resigned 

"  as  a  protest  against  Dr.  Colenso's  book,  it  would  be  taking 
an  unfair  advantage  of  Dr.  Colenso's  having  come  to  him 
as  a  friend  and  having  put  the  proofs  into  his  hand.  .  .  . 
You  are  prepared  to  betray  him  by  having  an  engine  of 
attack  to  be  issued  simultaneously  with  his  book.  ...  I 
think  this  involves  a  question  of  honour."  - 

This  letter,  Colonel  Maurice  adds, 

"  was  written  under  a  feeling  that  such  a  remonstrance  was 
the  only  means  that  would  stop  my  father  from  taking  a 
step  which  many  friends  had  intreated  Mr.  Bunyon  to  do  all 
that  he  could  to  prevent.  The  strong  wording  was  designed 
to  produce  the  effect  which  it  actually  did  produce  upon  a 
man  sensitive  to  the  last  degree  on  the  point  of  honour. 
Mr.  Bunyon  had  interposed  with  great  reluctance  and  as  a 
last  resource,  from  attachment  to  my  father,  and  regret  that 
his  brother-in-law  should  have  been  the  occasion  for  such 
action.  The  blow  fell  with  the  effect  of  a  complete  surprise 
upon  my  father.  His  action  had  been  largely  determined 
by  his  dislike  to  the  position  of  having  to  oppose  an  un- 
popular man,  whilst  he  was  thoroughly  convinced  that  it 
was  his  bounden  duty  to  oppose  the  Bishop.  The  sugges- 
tion that  his  proposed  conduct  looked  a  little  cowardly,  a 
little  like  taking  the  side  of  the  strong  against  the  weak, 
and  altogether  unfair,  was  intolerable  to  him.  It  was  just 
^  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  429.  2  /^_  yQi_  Yx.  p.  433. 


1 862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.       203. 


that  against  which  he  had  struggled  all  his  life.  .  .  .  He  gave 
way  at  once.  He  wrote  a  letter  of  pained  and  indignant 
protestation  to  Mr.  Bunyon,  saying  that  he  did  not  think 
that  an}'  one  who  knew  him  would  attribute  such  motives 
to  him.  He  wrote  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal  to  say  that 
he  would  not  at  all  events  act  before  the  book  appeared." 

In  a  letter  to  Dr.  Stanley  he  admitted  that  he  had  not  at 
first  seen  his  way  to  do  more  than  say  that  he  would  suspend 
all  his  doings  for  a  while,  but  that  he  soon  perceived  that  he 
had  been  "about  to  injure  Colenso  "  when  he  fancied  he  was 
only  injuring  himself. 

"  Then  it  became  clear  to  me  that  people  did — as  you  said 
they  would — utterly  mistake  my  meaning  and  suppose  me 
to  be  leaving  the  Church.  This  being  clear,  I  had  no 
alternative  but  to  say,  '  I  have  been  utterly  wrong,  my 
friends  altogether  right.'  I  said  so  to  my  congregation  last 
Sunday.  It  was  humiliating,  but  it  was  a  plain  duty.  .  .  I 
must  have  been  most  wilful,  but  I  could  not  see  it  till  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  complained  of  the  injustice  done  to  him." 

In  the  same  spirit  Mr.  Maurice  wrote  to  a  son  then  an 
undergraduate  at  Oxford  : — 

"  From  the  moment  that  I  saw  that  I  should  not  be  making 
a  declaration  of  principles  at  my  own  cost,  but  be  casting 
another  stone  at  him,  I  knew  that  I  must  be  wrong.  Then 
I  gradually  perceived  from  the  comments  in  the  papers  and 
from  private  letters  that  my  whole  meaning  had  been 
mistaken, — that  I  \\as  supposed  to  be  discontented  with  the 
Church,  when  I  wished  to  assert  my  dev^otion  to  it  most 
strongl}-.  Therefore  I  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  retreat  and 
confess  my  error.  I  did  so  last  Sunday  before  m)-  congre- 
gation. I  cannot  call  it  eating  the  leek,  except  that,  being 
a  Welshman  by  origin,  I  am  bound  to  like  leeks.  But  it 
was  a  humiliation,  however  much  I  might  rejoice  to  feel 
myself  once  again  the  minister  of  a  most  kind  and  friendl)' 
people."  1 

1  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  435. 


204  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

With  those  who  have  a  true  faith  in  the  Hving  God  of 
perfect  righteousness  and  perfect  love,  time  cannot  fail  to  deal 
gently  in  bringing  out  into  clearest  relief  the  unity  which 
underlies  all  their  superficial  differences.  In  their  treatment 
of  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  as  records  of  events  and 
incidents,  the  Bishop  of  Natal  differed  from  Mr.  Maurice  as 
widely  as  one  man  could  well  differ  from  another.  But, 
although  Mr.  Maurice  might  suppose  it  to  be  otherwise,  in 
their  conceptions  of  the  Divine  government  and  work  there 
was  a  complete  and  unbroken  harmony.  Some  who  may 
suppose  that  they  are  holding  the  balance  of  judgement  in- 
differently between  both  may  think  that,  if  in  their  faith  with 
regard  to  the  eternal  world  there  was  this  agreement,  it  was 
unfortunate  that  the  Bishop  of  Natal  should  have  raised  a 
controversy  of  no  importance.  But  we  shall  find,  when  we 
come  to  deal  with  the  so-called  Capetown  trial,  that  the 
debate  was  one  of  no  mean  significance  ;  nor  can  it  be  for- 
gotten that  it  was  not  a  debate  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal's 
raising.  There  are  other  errors  in  Christendom  besides  those 
against  which  Mr.  Maurice  maintained  a  persistent  warfare  ; 
and  among  the  most  mischievous  and  certainly  the  most 
oppressive  of  these  other  errors  is  the  fetishism  which  treats 
a  book  or  a  collection  of  books  as  an  image  which  "  fell  down 
from  Jupiter."  The  criticisms  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
directed  against  this  idolatry  only  strengthened  him  in 
convictions  which  none  could  express  more  forcibly  than 
Mr.  Maurice. 

*  Punishment,  the  Bible  teaches  me,"  said  Mr.  Maurice,  "  is 
always  God's  protest  against  sin,  His  instrument  for  per- 
suading men  to  turn  from  sin  to  righteousness.  If  punish- 
ment is  to  endure  for  ever,  it  is  a  witness  that  there  are 
always  persons  on  whom  God's  discipline  is  acting  to  raise 
them  out  of  sin.  Modern  theology — Dr.  Pusey's  theology 
— teaches  that  God  sentences  men  to  sin,  to  go  on  sinning 


1 864.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.      205 


more  and  more,  for  ever.  I  hold  that  that  is  to  say  that  He 
is  not  punishing,  that  He  gives  over  punishing.  I  stand  to 
the  letter, — the  ipsisshna  verba  of  Christ.  They  translate 
them  into  other  and  directly  opposite  words."  ^ 

They  were  translated  into  directly  opposite  words  by  the 
accusers  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  at  Capetown  ;  and  their  con- 
demnation of  the  error  imputed  to  Mr.  Maurice  was  perhaps 
not  a  whit  less  sweeping  than  their  condemnation  of  the 
heresy  of  Dr.  Colenso. 

We  may  go  a  step  further,  and  say  that  the  temporary 
separation  must  be  laid  wholly  at  Mr.  Maurice's  door.  He 
had  a  full  right — nay,  he  was  bound — to  proclaim  that  the 
whole  purpose  and  course  of  the  Divine  work  in  the  world  has 
been  and  is  to  convince  men  of  the  absolute  and  unswerving 
justice  of  God,  and  of  a  love  which  is  stronger  than  death — 

"  the  eternal  death  from  which  they  cry  to  be  delivered,  the 
torment  of  the  worm  in  their  conscience,  the  misery  of  being 
left  alone  with  themselves."  - 

But  he  took  up  untenable  ground  when  he  implied,  or 
rather  affirmed,  that  the  multitude  of  books  (biblia)  which 
we  speak  of  as  the  Bible,  instead  of  as  the  Bibles,  contains 
nothing  that  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  truths  which  to  Mr. 
Maurice  and  the  Bishop  of  Natal  were  dearer  than  life  itself. 
The  result  was  that  he  had  to  treat  as  antagonists  men  whom, 
if  he  would  but  have  altered  his  forms  of  expression,  he  would 
have  seen  to  be  wholly  on  his  side. 

In  September,  iS6|,  Sir  Edward  Strache)-,  the  life-long 
and  devoted  friend  of  Mr.  Maurice,  invited  him  to  meet 
the  Bishop  at  his  house. 

"Your  purpose,"  Mr.  Maurice  answered,  "is  most  kind,  and 
}'our  wa}'   of   putting  it    kinder  still.      I    will   answer  with 

'  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  473.  -  //'.  vol.  ii.  p.  476. 


2o6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 

the  frankness  you  desired.  There  has  been  an  estrangement 
between  Colenso  and  me  since  he  came  to  England.  I 
think  that  the  Bible  is  the  great  deliverer  from  ecclesiastical 
bondage,  the  great  protector  for  human  freedom.  That  is 
the  maxim  I  have  always  tried  to  maintain  when  he  took 
up  exactly  the  opposite  maxim,  when  he  treated  the  Bible 
as  itself  the  instrument  of  our  slavery,  and  seemed  to  think 
that  to  throw  it  off  would  be  the  great  step  to  emancipation. 
I  felt  that  he  was  giving  up  the  ground  to  the  Bishop  of 
Oxford  and  Dr.  Pusey.  I  saw  nothing  before  us  but  that 
fanaticism  against  criticism,  that  effort  to  bind  a  human 
tyranny  upon  us,  which  these  last  few  years  have  developed. 
...  If  I  identified  myself  with  those  who  were  called 
liberal  thinkers,  who  seemed  to  be,  and  in  many  aspects 
were,  pleading  for  the  rights  of  the  clergy  and  the  rights  of 
conscience,  I  must  have  abandoned  my  own  position,  a 
position  difficult  enough  to  maintain,  full  of  sorrow,  involving 
an  isolation  from  all  parties,  but,  as  I  think,  necessary  for 
the  good  of  all  parties.  To  make  Colenso  understand  why 
I  do  this — that  I  am  not  a  traitor  to  freedom,  and  friendship 
also — is  impossible  at  present."  ^ 

In  this  passage  there  is  nothing  said  of  the  Bible  with 
which  the  Bishop  of  Natal  would  have  hesitated  to  express 
his  agreement.  These  books  are,  or  may  be,  great  deliverers 
from  ecclesiastical  bondage,  great  protectors  for  human  freedom. 
Luther  found  them  to  be  so  ;  but  the  extent  of  the  deliverance 
depends  on  the  spirit  in  which  they  are  applied.  Against 
the  system  of  Latin  Christendom,  Luther  found  in  them  a 
potent  engine  of  war  ;  and  just  because  he  took,  or  professed  to 
take,  his  stand  on  the  litera  scripta  of  words  on  which  criticism 
only  of  a  certain  kind — that  is,  his  own  interpretation — was  to 
be  brought  to  bear,  he  made  it  the  bulwark  of  a  bondage 
quite  as  severe  as  that  against  which  he  had  himself  rebelled. 

1  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  486.  Mr.  Maurice  concludes  this  letter  with  the  fol- 
lowing words,  "  I  have  met  the  Bishop  several  times,  and  there  is,  I  hope, 
not  the  least  unkindness  between  us." 


1864.    PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.      207 

But  to  say  that  the  Bishop  of  Natal  treated,  or  spoke  of,  the 
Bible  itself  as  the  instrument  of  our  slavery,  is  to  say  simply 
that  which  is  not  true.  He  never  meant  this,  and  he  never 
said  it.  The  Bible  had  by  many  been  made  a  fetish  ;  and 
Mr.  Maurice  seemed  to  speak  as  though  the  superstition 
which  had  made  it  a  fetish  should  not  be  assailed  and  put 
down.  Had  the  Bishop,  moreover,  been  really  giving  up  the 
ground  to  Dr.  Wilberforce  or  Dr.  Pusey,  it  is  strange  that  they 
should  not  recognise  or  admit  their  obligation  for  his  good 
service.  This  mistake  (and  lapse  of  time  seems  to  exhibit  it 
more  and  more  as  an  absurd  mistake)  runs  through  all  that 
Mr.  Maurice  has  to  say  on  the  subject. 

"  I  had  felt  a  stronger  interest,"  he  writes  to  a  clergyman  in 
South  Africa,  "  in  Colenso's  diocese  and  mission  than  in  any 
other.  He  and  his  wife  were  old  friends  of  mine.  He  had 
behaved  very  generously  to  me.  When  he  avowed  his 
sympathy  with  my  refusal  to  speak  of  three-score  years  and 
ten  as  the  limit  of  God's  education  of  man,  I  was  ready  to 
follow  him  in  any  conflicts  into  which  he  might  enter. 
When  he  set  himself  at  war  with  the  Jewish  economy,  I  was 
utterly  struck  down."  ^ 

But  the  Bishop  had  never  done,  never  thought  of  doing, 
anything  of  the  kind.  What  he  had  sought  was  to  find  out, 
so  far  as  it  might  be  possible  to  do  so,  what  this  economy  was. 
The  life  of  the  Old  Testament  was,  he  knew,  the  life  of  "  the 
prophets  which  had  been  since  the  world  began,"  and  he  knew 
also  that  to  this  life  the  main  body  of  the  people  with  their 
rulers,  ecclesiastical  and  civil,  had  been  always  more  or  less 
vehemently  opposed.  Far,  therefore,  from  setting  himself  at 
war  with  the  life  of  the  Old  Testament,  the  Bishop  was  anxious 
only  to  bring  it  into  clearer  light.  But  if  Mr.  Maurice  once 
took  it  into  his  head  that  any  thinker  or  writer  applied  the 

^  Lifc^  vol.  ii.  p.  490. 


2o8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  v 

laws  of  human  evidence  to  realities  of  another  order,  the 
conviction  remained  immovable.  The  suggestion  that  the 
prophecies  of  Balaam,  for  instance,  are,  to  say  the  least,  post- 
Davidic,  implied  in  his  opinion  want  of  faith  in  the  Divine 
government  of  the  world.  Any  one  who  presumes  to  offer  such 
a  suggestion  has  been  dabbling  in  the  school  of  Niebuhr  ;  and 
the  school  of  Niebuhr  maintains,  it  seems,  that 

"  God  has  nothing  to  do  with  nations  and  politics.  They  are 
to  be  left  to  such  men  as  Metternich  and  Louis  Napoleon. 
Accursed  doctrine ;  part  of  that  Atheism  of  our  religious 
world  which  nothing  but  a  baptism  of  the  Spirit  and  of  fire 
can  deliver  us  from."  ^ 

We  shall  have  to  recur  to  this  subject  elsewhere.  For  the 
present  it  is  enough  to  say  that  Mr.  Maurice,  using  the  simplest 
and  most  familiar  words,  seems  to  pass  here  beyond  the  range 
of  ordinary  human  comprehension.  The  most  diligent  students 
of  Niebuhr  will  look  with  amazement  at  a  charge  for  which 
they  will  discern  in  all  his  writings  not  even  the  shadow  of  a 
foundation.  They  will  remember  that,  while  he  insisted  on 
the  need  of  historical  evidence  for  historical  facts,  he  asserted 
for  himself,  and  for  other  students  who  had  attained  to  his 
own  experience,  the  possession  of  a  divining  power  which 
enabled  him  to  recover  facts  for  which  historical  testimony 
was  really  lacking.  But  they  will  remember  also  that  his 
History  of  Rome  is  indeed  not  a  denial  of  the  truth  that  God 
has  something  to  do  with  nations  and  politics,  but  a  passionate 
and  most  vehement  assertion  of  it,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
work  to  its  close.  It  is  singular  that  in  his  assertion  of  this 
truth  the  language  of  Niebuhr  is  not  unlike  that  of  Mr. 
Maurice.  But  the  unbelief,  which  the  latter  finds  in  Niebuhr 
he  finds  also  in  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 

1  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  510. 


1 862.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.      209 

"  This  unbelief  about  nations,  Colenso,  I  apprehend,  shares 
with  his  opponents.  It  comes  out  equally  in  both.  And  it 
should  be  observed  that  Colenso  has  not  the  least  studied 
under  Niebuhr.  He  belongs,  if  he  has  investigated  such 
questions  at  all,  to  the  later  and  merely  negative  school  of 
Sir  G.  C.  Lewis." 

To  this  also  w^e  must  recur  hereafter,  now  noting  only  that 
not  a  line  can  be  cited  from  the  Bishop's  writings  which  lends 
the  faintest  colour  to  the  suspicion  that  he  limited  the  action 
of  the  Divine  government  to  individual  men.  So  far  as  such 
a  notion  could  have  been  intelligible  to  him,  he  would  have 
shrunk  from  it  with  horror  ;  but  it  resolves  itself  seemingly 
into  something  like  nonsense.  Mr.  Maurice,  indeed,  knew  not 
what  he  was  saying. 

The  fact  is  that  the  denunciation  of  unbelief,  of  want  of 
faith  and  want  of  love,  was  with  Mr.  Maurice  a  potent  instru- 
ment of  war ;  and  he  used  his  weapons  somewhat  recklessly. 
He  never  more  sadly  misused  them  than  when  he  imputed  to 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  the  idea  that  nations  do  not  come  within 
the  scope  of  the  Divine  discipline.  Mr.  Maurice  did  not  live 
to  witness  it  himself ;  but,  had  he  been  spared,  he  would  have 
seen  the  singleness  of  devotion  with  which  the  man  whom  he 
charged  with  this  unbelief  gave  himself  up  to  the  task  of 
bringing  home  to  his  countrymen  a  long  series  of  acts  of 
national  injustice  and  wrong.  Mr.  Maurice,  however,  can 
scarcely  have  failed  to  know  that  long  before  his  return  to 
England  in  1861  the  Bishop  had  won  from  the  Kafir  and 
Zulu  people  the  title  of  Sobantu,  and  that  this  title  ex- 
pressed emphatically  the  gratitude  not  of  individuals,  but 
of  races. 

Only  three  more  letters  are  forthcoming  from  the  corre- 
spondence with  Mr.  Maurice  at  this  time.      The  two  last  arc 
given  with  the  address  and  the  final  subscription, — sad  proof 
of  the  havoc  wrought  on  a  friendship  of  man)-  \'ears  by  an 
VOL.  I.  p 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  v. 


obstinate  refusal  to  examine  or  even  to  look  at  the  evidence 
for  alleged  facts. 

To  THE  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice. 

"WiNNiNGTON  Hall,  Northwich, 
''October  14,  1862. 

"  In  one  of  your  letters  you  said  that  you  would  send  me  back 
the  copy  of  my  book,  which  you  had,  by  post  next  day. 
It  has  never  reached  me  ;  and  perhaps  you  may  have  for- 
gotten to  send  it.  I  am  shortly  about  to  publish  the  First 
Part  of  my  book,  containing  only  a  small  portion  of  the 
matter  brought  together  in  that  volume,  and  wish,  therefore, 
to  recall  the  copies  of  my  '  first  impressions  '  which  are  in 
the  hands  of  my  friends.  .  .  . 

"  I  send  you  a  copy  of  the  introductory  chapter,  as  it  now 
stands ;  or,  rather,  I  have  cancelled  this  chapter  also  in 
order  to  introduce  af  few  verbal  corrections. 

"  I  have  thought  it  right  to  state  that  yoii  are  in  no  way  com- 
mitted to  the  views  expressed  in  this  book  ;  that,  in  fact, 
*  in  making  and  publishing  such  investigations  as  these,  I 
am  acting  neither  with  your  advice  nor  with  your  approval.' 

"  P.S. — I  think,  upon  the  whole,  it  will  be  better  not  to  send 
the  introductory  chapter.  I  shall  send  you  the  whole 
book  when  published." 

To   THE   same. 

"  Pendvffrin,  Conway, 
''July  25,  1863. 

"  My  dear  Mr.  Maurice, 
"  I  did  not  mean  to  '  mock  you.'  Every  word  of  my  letter 
was  written  in  sincerity,  with  an  unfeigned  desire  to  express 
the  most  kind  and  respectful  feelings  towards  you.  I  had 
been  told  that  you  thought  that  I  resented  your  former  ex- 
pressions. I  thought  it  might  show  to  you  that  your 
estimate  of  the  worthlessness  of  my  labours  in  a  critical 
point  of  view  was  not  altogether  justified  by  the  reception 
which  they  have  met  with  from  one,  at  least,  of  the  most 


1863.     PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  GREAT  WARFARE.      211 

eminent  Continental  scholars.  But  I  wished  at  the  same 
time  to  convey  to  you  as  plainly  as  I  could  an  intimation 
that  on  my  side,  at  all  events,  there  were  no  such  feelings 
of  resentment  as  (I  was  told)  you  imagined  to  exist.  I  am 
sorry  that  I  happen  to  have  failed,  though  I  cannot  think 
that  my  language  deserved  the  last  sentence  in  your  letter. 
"  I  am,  m)-  dear  Mr.  Maurice, 

"  Faithfully  yours, 

"J.  W.  Natal." 

To    THE    SAME. 

"  23  Sussex  Place,  Atigust  17,  1863. 
"My  dear  Mr.  Maurice, 
"  Let  me  write  one  line  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your 
last  kind  note,  and  to  thank  you  sincerely  for  it.  I  am 
sorry  that  I  have  pained  }-ou  and  other  good  men  by  any- 
thing that  I  have  written  or  published.  But  I  am  confident 
with  you  that  our  God  and  Father  will  make  all  these 
things — these  strivings  after  truth,  these  feeble  efforts  of 
His  children  to  know  and  to  serve  Him  better— turn  at 
last  effectually  to  His  own  glory  and  our  good. 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  J.  W.  Natal." 


P2 


CHAPTER  VI. 

WORK  IN  ENGLAND,  1S63-65.   THE  BATTLE. 

In  spite  of  all  that  may  be  said  from  any  one  of  the  many 
points  of  view  taken  by  those  who  would  not  have  quiet  things 
disturbed,  the  publication  of  the  Bishop's  work  on  the  Penta- 
teuch marks  a  stage  in  the  progress  of  religious  thought  in 
England.  By  all  who  had  any  vested  interests  in  inaction 
the  work  was  received  at  the  time  with  jeers  ;  and  these  jeers 
were  repeated  on  every  possible  opportunity  during  the 
remainder  of  his  life,  and  were  renewed  with  scarcely  less 
asperity  after  his  death.  The  fascination  of  ribaldry  must 
indeed  be  strong  for  writers  who  could  affect  to  feel  regret 
that  Dr.  Colenso  was  not  allowed  to  end  his  days  in  the 
recesses  of  Norfolk,  to  which  wandering  Zulus  were  not  likely 
to  penetrate  with  suggestions  of  arithmetical  difficulties 
known  by  all  theological  students  to  be  stale  with  the  age 
of  centuries.  Such  writers  might  feel  a  solid  satisfaction 
in  relating 

"  how,  in  a  fashion  which  moved,  and  reasonably  so,  the 
laughter  of  the  profane  and  the  contempt  of  the  robuster 
orthodox,  the  newly-appointed  Bishop  went  to  convert  and 
was  converted  himself" 

The  egregious  folly  of  cynicism  was  seldom  more  extrava- 
gantly shown  than  in  a  sentence  which  affirms  that  the  mockers 


1 863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND—  THE  BA  TTLE.  2 1 3 

began  to  laugh  and  gibe  some  six  or  seven  years  before  any 
cause  for  laughter  or  mockery  was  given.  But  it  was  a 
bolder  thing  to  say,  more  than  twenty  years  after  the  book 
appeared,  that 

"though  many  men,  and  some  of  them  men  of  the  highest 
honour,  if  not  of  the  most  exalted  intellect,  might  have 
written  the  too  famous  Pentateuch  and  Book  of  Joshua,  no 
man  of  delicate  honour  could  have  attempted  to  hold  the 
office  of  bishop  in  the  Church  of  England  one  day  after 
writing  it,  or  even  one  hour  after  definitely  forming  the 
opinions  which  it  was  written  to  expound."  ^ 

This  is  just  the  point  at  issue,  and  the  challenge  shall  be 
forthwith  taken  up  and  dealt  with.  But  the  nature  of  these 
opinions  must  be  first  of  all  defined.  If  they  are  held  to  be 
notions  about  the  general  estimate  of  the  authority  of  the 
collection  of  waitings  called  "  the  Bible "  as  a  whole,  then  it 
must  be  said  at  once  that  these  were  not  the  opinions  which 
the  Bishop  was  desirous  of  maintaining.  His  purpose  was  to 
examine  the  first  six  books  in  this  large  collection  ;  and  the 
conclusions  which  he  reached  were  that  these  books  contained, 
with  some  historical  matter,  a  large  amount  which  cannot  be 
considered  historical  at  all,  and  more  particularly  that  they 
contained  an  elaborate  account  of  an  extremely  minute  and 
highly  wrought  ecclesiastical  legislation  put  together  many 
centuries  after  the  time  to  which  they  professed  to  relate. 
The  Bishop  would  have  been  basely  deserting  his  post,  he 
would  have  been  doing  an  irreparable  wrong  to  the  coming 
generations,  had  he  foreclosed  the  debate  by  declaring  that 
such  conclusions  might  not  lawfully  be  maintained  by  any 
clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England. 

'  The  reference  for  this  extract  is  designedly  withheld.  I  do  not 
purpose  to  honour  with  mention  the  source  of  these  vile  falsehoods.  But 
the  reference  has  been  kept,  and  is  producible  if  it  should  be  needed. 


214  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

It  is  childish  to  say  that  he  was  in  any  way  called  on  to 
heed  the  great  mass  of  so-called  criticism  with  which  he  was 
assailed.  His  Commentary  on  the  Romans  had  been  attacked 
in  some  quarters  with  violent  abuse  and  scurrilous  invective. 
These  onslaughts  deserve  no  notice,  and  have  now  little 
interest  except  as  instances  of  the  readiness  with  which  writers 
coming  forward  as  champions  of  traditionalism  resort  to  the 
potent  weapons  of  falsehood.  One  of  these  in  the  London 
Quarterly  Reviezv  (1862),  affected  to  regard  it  as  a  dire  offence 
that  the  Bishop,  after  returning  to  England  in  1854,  should 
presume  to  express  any  opinion  on  anything  connected  with 
his  diocese  after  so  short  a  stay  as  ten  weeks  ^  only  ;  and  then 
avows  his  surprise  that 

"a  ruler  in  the  Church  of  God  and  a  Bishop  pledged  to  uphold 
the  teaching  of  the  Church  of  England  " 

should  be  able 

"  in  so  short  a  time  to  arrive  at  a  definite  opinion  in  favour  of 
polygamy,  and  to  promulgate  it,  along  with  his  censure 
upon  those  who  had  upheld  the  doctrine  in  which  both  he 
and  they  had  been  brought  up." 

The  italics  are  those  of  the  writer,  and  the  statement  so 
emphasized  is  a  lie."^  The  falsehood  renders  it  unnecessary  to 
give  further  heed  to  any  of  his  remarks. 

In  the  same  fashion  some  Familiar  Dialogues  set  forth 
under  the  title  Is  the  Bible  true  ?  ^  start  with  the  assertion 
that  the  Bishop's  work  on  the  Pentateuch 

"  insists  on  the  absolute  untruth  of  all  the  first  five  books  of 
the  Bible." 

This  statement  also  is  a  lie. 

Such  criticisms  are  pre-eminently  dishonourable.  But  not 
a  little  of  such  unfairness  is  roused  still  in  some  minds  after 

^  See  73.  ^  See  p.  67.  ^  Seeley,  1863. 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  EXGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  215 

the  lapse  of  a  quarter  of  a  century,  whenever  the  name  of 
Colenso  is  mentioned.  The  word  sat  in  Sanskrit,  denoting 
truth,  means  simply  that  wliicJi  is.  If  a  man  feels  that  he  has 
reached  conclusions  which  rest  on  this  foundation,  he  may 
well  dispense  with  the  encouragement  or  the  applause  of  his 
fellows.     Of  such  a  one  Professor  INIax  Miiller  asserts  : 

"  Whoever  has  once  stood  alone,  surrounded  by  noisy  assertions 
and  overshadowed  by  the  clamour  of  those  who  ought  to 
know  better,  and  perhaps  did  know  better — call  him 
Galileo,  or  Darwin,  or  Colenso,  or  Stanley,  or  any  other 
name — he  knows  what  a  real  delight  it  is  to  feel  in  his 
heart  of  hearts.  This  is  true,  this  is,  this  is  sat,  whatever 
daily,  weekly,  or  quarterly  papers,  whatever  Bishops,  Arch- 
bishops, or  Popes  may  say  to  the  contrary." 

This  sentence  would  probably  have  been  allowed  to  pass 
unchallenged,  but  for  the  recurrence  of  one  name  in  it.  But, 
this  name  being  introduced,  an  Edinburgh  Reviewer  found 
himself  constrained  to  remark  : — 

"  Certainly,  if  it  be  true.  But  does  the  mere  presence  of 
opposition  prove  it  such  ?  Or  does  it  follow  because 
Galileo  was  so  beaten  down  by  ignorant  fanaticism,  and  the 
reasoning  of  Darwin  for  a  time  opposed  by  those  who,  in 
ignorance  of  its  meaning,  dreaded  what  they  regarded  as 
its  consequences,  that  the  criticism  of  Colenso  was  not 
exceedingly  poor,  and  the  reading  of  Stanley,  in  spite  of 
his  genius,  sometimes  discursive,  and  his  conclusions  some- 
times illogical  ? "  ^ 

This  is  a  sample  of  the  fashion  in  which  anonymous 
journalists,  among  other  champions  of  traditionalism,  shelve 
a  subject  with  which  they  have  no  intention  to  deal.  But  the 
article  from  which  these  words  are  taken  illustrates  further 
the  fatal  temper  of  mind  which  has  made  so  much  missionary 
work  abortive  and  against  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal  fought 
^  Edinburgh  Rez'iciu,  April  1884,  p.  473. 


2i6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

most  earnestly.  The  Rig  Veda,  like  the  Pentateuch,  contains 
the  literature  of  a  time  earlier  probably  by  a  millennium  (it 
may  be  more)  than  the  Christian  era.  It  contains  much  that 
is  pure,  beautiful,  and  touching  ;  it  contains  certainly  some 
matter  to  which  these  epithets  could  not  possibly  be  applied. 
But  it  is  the  contention  of  the  Reviewer  that  in  this  respect 
there  is  no  comparison  between  the  Rig  Veda  and  the 
Pentateuch  or  the  Old  Testament  generally.  In  the  latter 
the  growth  is  in  his  judgement  always  upward  ;  in  the  former 
it  is  uniformly  downwards,  and  he  denies  absolutely  that  in 
the  Old  Testament  we  have 

"  in  juxtaposition  with  that  which  is  pure  and  elevated  about 
God  and  man  the  false,  silly,  and  repulsive  elements  which 
we  shall  find  in  such  abundance  in  the  Rig  Veda." 

He  professes  to  be  so  shocked  and  horrified  with  the  soliloquy 
of  Indra  after  drinking  the  Soma  juice  that  he  refuses,  as  he 
says,  to  sully  his  page  by  quoting  any  part  of  it ;  and  yet  the 
most  dreadful  part  of  this  soliloquy  is  in  the  following  words  :— 

"  The  draughts  which   I  have  drunk  impel   me  like  violent 

blasts  :   I  have  quaffed  the  Soma.     .     .     . 
The  h}-mn  of  m}^  worshippers  has  hastened  to  me,  as  a  cow 

to  her  beloved  calf:   I  have  quaffed  the  Soma. 
I  turn  the  hymn   round  about  my  heart,  as  a  carpenter  a 

beam  :   I  have  quaffed  the  Soma 

Let  me  smite  the  earth  rapidly  hither  and  thither  :  I  have 

quaffed  the  Soma. 
One  half  of  me  is  in  the  sky,  and   I  have  drawn  the  other 

down  :   I  have  quaffed  the  Soma. 
I  am  majestic,  elevated  in  the  heavens  :  I  have  quaffed  the 

Soma. 
I  go  prepared  as  a  minister,  a  bearer  of  oblations  to  the 

gods  :   I  have  quaffed  the  Soma."  ^ 

1  Muir,  Sanskrit  Texts,  vol.  v.  p.  91. 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  217 

Without  troubling  themselves  to  analyse  the  many  meanings 
which  the  word  Soma  assumes  in  the  Rig  Veda,  such  writers 
as  these  look  only  with  contempt  on  hymns  which  speak  of 
Soma  as,  like  Varuna,  forgiving  the  penitent  or  punishing  the 
guilty,  and  see  nothing  but  degradation  in  the  prayer — 

"  Be  gracious,  Soma,  Rig,  for  our  salvation. 
Be  well  assured  then  that  we  are  thine. 
Against  us  rise  both  wrath  and  cunning,  Soma  : 
O  leave  us  not  in  power  of  the  foe  ; " 

or  in  the  intreat}- — 

"  This  Soma,  drawn  into  my  inside,  I  invoke  as  quite  near  ; 
Whatever    sin     we    have    committed    may    he    graciousl)' 
forgive  it." 

Yet  these  prayers  are  not  without  points  even  of  close  like- 
ness to  the  Eucharistic  language  of  Christendom  or  the  Triden- 
tine  phraseology  in  reference  to  the  Real  Presence ;  and  the 
"jargon  of  the  inebriated  divinities  of  India  "  suggests  a  parallel 
with  the  expressions  which  speak  of  Jehovah  awaking  out  of 
sleep  and  smiting  his  enemies  in  the  hinder  parts  like  a  giant 
refreshed  with  wine.  Nor  can  the  poor  Vedic  worshipper  be 
well  blamed  for  his  superstitious  dreams  about  the  power  of  the 
Soma  over  Indra,  if  Jehovah  after  smelling  the  sweet  savour 
of  Noah's  burnt-offering  promises  that  he  will  not  again  curse 
the  ground  for  man's  sake.  The  Reviewer  was  probably  not 
a  missionary ;  but  the  missionary  who  enters  on  his  work 
with  such  prejudices,  and  who  condemns  the  Rig  Veda  for 
juxtaposition  of  pure  and  gross  matter,  as  though  this  juxta- 
position might  not  be  charged  on  the  old  Hebrew  Scriptures, 
will  find  that  he  is  using  a  weapon  which  will  recoil  upon 
himself,  and  will,  at  least,  multiply  precisely  those  difficulties 
which  the  Bishop  of  Natal  set  to  work  from  the  first  to  sweep 
away. 


2i8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

It  may  be  well  perhaps  to  take  notice  of  one  or  two  more 
samples  of  the  many  sorts  of  comments  evoked  by  the  Bishop's 
volume  five-and-twenty  years  ago.  Appearing  without  any 
date,  probably  in  1863  or  1864,  a  volume,  intitled  The  Bible 
in  the  Workshops  and  professing  to  make  short  work  of  the 
Bishop's  criticisms  on  the  Pentateuch,  was  put  forth,  as  the 
title-page  averred,  by  two  working  men,  "  a  Jew  and  a  Gentile." 
Towards  the  end  of  the  book  the  two  writers  relieve  their 
consciences,  it  would  seem,  by  thus  addressing  the  Bishop  : — 

"  When  you  are  lying  upon  your  death-bed  and  your  past  life 
is  passing  in  rapid  review  before  you,  it  may  be  some  small 
satisfaction  to  you  to  know  that  at  least  two  (the  Jew  writer 
and  the  Gentile  writer)  of  the  class  to  whom  your  book  is 
calculated  to  be  most  dangerous,  after  careful  examination 
are  convinced  of  its  utter  groundlessness  and  folly."  j 

Speaking  again  as  zve,  in  their  twenty-third  chapter  as  every- 
where else,  the  Jew  workman  and  the  Gentile  workman 
declare  that 

"  we  believe  that  our  Lord  never  uttered  a  single  word  that 
was  not  strictly  true  in  every  sense  of  the  word." 

The  two  broadly  hint  and  broadly  state  that  the  Bishop  is  an 
apostate  from  Christianity  ;  but  what  has  the  Jew  workman, 
if  he  retains  at  all  any  distinctively  Jewish  faith,  to  do  with 
Christianity  .-*  how,  being  a  Jew,  can  he  speak  of  Jesus  Christ 
as  his  Lord  and  Master  ?  and  if  he  has  abandoned  the  faith 
of  his  fathers,  how  can  he  call  himself  a  Jew  ?  The  whole 
thing  looks  like  a  fraud  on  the  public  ;  and  if  the  title-page 
only  be  taken  into  account  it  is  nothing  less  than  a  fraud.  I 
But  the  advertisement  informs  us  that  " 

"  every  word  has  been  written  by  one  workman,  with  the 
advice  and  assistance  of  the  other  in  all  matters  concerning 
Jewish  customs  and  the  Hebrew  language."  a 


il 


1 863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLA  ND—  THE  BA  TTLE.  2 1 9 

By  this  statement  a  falsehood  of  one  kind  is  got  rid  of  by 
introducing  a  falsehood  of  another  kind.  To  say  the  least, 
the  Jew  workman,  by  giving  his  authority,  whatever  its  weight 
might  be,  to  a  w^ork  which  fights  for  a  very  narrow  form  of 
Christian  traditionalism,  seems  to  have  fairly  crossed  the 
borders  of  apostasy  to  his  own  faith.  A  fight  so  carried  on  is 
not  legitimate  warfare. 

Not  much  more  creditable  than  this  was  the  method 
resorted  to  by  Dr.  Kay,^  who  denounced  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
as  applying  to  the  Pentateuch  a  disintegration  theory,  which 
rests  on  the  principles  of  "religious  unbelief"  and  "  historical 
Pyrrhonism." 

*'  The  question  of  the  authenticity  of  the  book  was  evidently 
decided,"  he  said,  "  long  before  the  critical  analysis  was  set 
on  foot.  The  muster-roll  of  phrases  has  no  more  real  office 
to  fulfil  than  had  the  senate  of  Tiberius  or  the  jury  of  Judge 
Jeffreys.  Unbelief,  the  spirit  that  refuses  to  recognise 
any  (! !)  Divine  intervention  in  the  world's  history,  had 
already  settled  the  matter. 

"  If  Genesis  be  an  authentic  document,  then  it  is  certain  that 
there  is  an  objective  basis  for  religious  faith.  God  has 
communed  with  men.  Preparation  is  thus  made  for  the 
future  introduction  of  Christianity.  The  Gospel  has  its 
roots  buried  deep  in  the  world's  history,  for  its  seed  was 
laid  in  the  Protevangelium,  Gen.  iii.  15.  To  get  rid  of  this 
book  of  Genesis,  then,  is  a  necessary  preliminary  for  any 
assault  on  Christianity."  - 

With  equal  assurance  Dr.  Kay  adds, 

"  Admit  the  authenticity  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  all  is  solved. 
Deny  it,  and  all  is  impenetrably  dark.  One  of  the  most 
conspicuous  facts  of  history,  namely,  the  existence  of  a  purer 
religion  for  fourteen  centuries  among  a  people  not  less  prone 
than   the   rest   of  the  world  to   a   sensual   idolatry,   has  no 

^  Crisis  Hitpfeldiana ;  Parker,  1S65.  -  lb.  pp.  60,  61. 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 


explanation.  Other  miracles,  which  affected  the  physical 
world  for  brief  intervals  of  time,  may  be  got  rid  of:  this 
enduring  miracle  in  the  sphere  of  spiritual  life  cannot."  ^ 

Dr.  Kay's  fact  was  a  mere  delusion  ;  and  from  it  we  may 
pass  to  the  thoughts  and  words  of  more  sober-minded  and 
careful  critics  and  students.  In  truth  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
was  giving  a  marvellous  impulse  to  thought  in  England.  But 
he  was  not  perhaps  fully  aware  that  the  two  currents  of  belief 
and  feeling  which  were  manifesting  themselves  in  this  country 
might  be  traced,  within  the  limits  and  beyond  the  borders  of 
his  own  South  African  diocese,  in  communities  not  belonging 
to  the  Church  of  England.  These  were  the  Presbyterian  and 
Calvinistic  societies,  the  peace  of  which  had  been  disturbed  by 
controversies  on  the  personality  of  the  devil,  on  the  duty  or  the 
wickedness  of  inquiry,  on  the  power  of  man  to  will  what  he 
will  be,  on  the  arbitrary  selection  of  some  as  chosen  vessels 
before  their  birth,  all  others  being  rejected.  The  direction  in 
which  the  current  was  flowing,  was  shown  in  the  election  of  Mr. 
Burgers,  a  "  renowned  heretic,"  as  President  of  the  TransvaaL 
On  this  subject  some  remarks  by  the  Rev.  Henry  Rawlings 
deserve  to  be  noted. 

"  The  story  of  Colenso's  career,  as  commonly  told,  does  not," 
he  thinks,  "  throw  any  special  light  upon  religious  progress 
in  South  Africa,  because  the  conflict  between  the  Progressive 
and  the  Conservative  parties  here  took  its  origin  from  other 
sources,  notably  Dutch  Liberal  theology,  and  received  its 
stamp  from  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  colony.  Of 
course,  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  Colenso  did  not  exercise 
great  influence  here.  Undoubtedly  he  did,  as  he  did  every- 
where,— even  in  Holland  itself,  and  amongst  the  most  learned 
and  liberal  professors  there.  But  the  point  is  that  he  did 
not  impart  the  original  impulse  here,  nor  did  he  give  to 


^  Crisis  Hiipfeldiana,  p.  93. 


1 


1,963-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  221 

the  struggle  its  characteristic  nature.      He  only  reinforced 
(powerfully,  it  may  be)  tendencies  already  manifested. 

*'  When  I  learnt  in  the  beginning  of  1862  that  Colenso  was 
occupied  with  a  work  upon  the  Pentateuch,  I  sent  him  the 
then  published  first  part  of  Professor  Kuenen's  now  famous 
work  upon  the  Old  Testament.  He  replied  on  April  i, 
*  I  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  sending  me  Kuenen's  book, 
which  will  be  of  the  greatest  use  to  me.  It  has  compelled 
me  in  the  first  place  to  read  Dutch,  and  I  shall  now  be  able 
to  appreciate  De  Oiidercocker  better  than  I  could.  But  I 
have  now  read  the  first  186  pages  of  the  book,  those  which 
concern  the  Pentateuch,  with  deep  interest,  and  fully  under- 
stand what  you  say  about  the  value  of  it.'  And  he  related 
in  the  preface  to  Part  I.  of  his  own  work  on  the  Pentateuch 
that,  when  he  was  occupied  in  Natal  in  preparing  it  for  the 
press,  he  was  still  unacquainted  with  all  other  foreign  works 
on  the  Old  Testament,  except  those  of  Ewald  and  Kurtz,  of 
which  the  first  was  somewhat  liberal  and  the  second  wholly 
and  entirely  orthodox  ;  and  that  after  becoming  acquainted 
Avith  other  works,  and  especially  that  of  Kuenen,  which  he 
calls  a  work  of  singular  merit,  he  had  to  modify  his  own  in 
some  respects. 

"On  my  advice  he  visited  Holland  in  September  1S63,  and 
wrote  to  me  on  October  5  of  that  year : — '  I  have  just 
returned  from  a  delightful  visit  to  Leiden.  I  discussed  with 
Professor  Kuenen  at  full  length  every  point  of  difficulty  in 
the  criticism  of  the  Pentateuch.  The  contrast  between  the 
reception  which  I  met  with  from  really  learned  Hebrew  and 
Biblical  scholars  at  Leiden,  and  that  which  has  been  my  lot 
in  England  from  an  unlearned  and  prejudiced  clergy  is 
very  striking,  and  not  a  little  humiliating  to  an  Englishman, 
I  saw  most  of  the  notabilities  of  Leiden, — among  the  rest. 
Professor  Scholten,  Professor  Van  Hengel,  Professor  Rau- 
wenhof,  &c.  .  .  .  When  I  visited  Germany,  Professor  Hup- 
feld  was  unfortunately  out  on  his  vacation  tour.' 

"Later  Kuenen  visited  the  Bishop  in  England,  and  there  arose 
between  them  a  friendship  which  had  very  important  fruits 
for  theological  science.  .  .  .  The  readers  of  De  Ondcrzoekef 


222  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vl 

know  how  much  is  now  made  of  Dutch  theology  in  Eng- 
land, and  I  trust  that  it  will  be  clear  from  the  foregoing 
that  the  first  cause  of  this  must  be  sought  chiefly  in 
Colenso's  work,  and  at  the  same  time  that  there  was  every 
chance  that  Colenso  would  have  remained  still  for  a  long 
time  unacquainted  with  Holland's  theological  work,  if  the 
existence  of  two  languages  in  South  Africa  had  not  been 
the  means  of  making  him  conversant  with  the  theological 
literary  work  of  Holland." 

When  he  left  Natal,  he  did  not  intend  to  be  absent  from 
his  diocese  for  more  than  eighteen  months  or  two  years  at 
furthest.  He  was  detained  in  England  for  a  much  longer 
time  ;  but,  indefatigable  in  his  work,  he  availed  himself  of 
delays  caused  by  his  opponents,  not  by  himself,  to  do  what  he 
could  towards  making  English  readers  acquainted  with  the 
Biblical  criticism  of  the  Continent,  and  especially  of  that 
country  in  Europe  with  which,  in  the  days  of  Erasmus,  England 
was  more  closely  connected  than  with  any  other.  The  inter- 
ruptions caused  by  the  so-called  trial  at  Capetown  and  its 
consequences  prevented  his  settling  down,  during  the  later 
portion  of  his  stay  in  England,  with  any  prospect  of  being 
able  to  complete  the  Fifth  Part  of  his  work  before  returning 
to  his  diocese.  He  therefore  resolved,  by  translating  Professor 
Kuenen's  criticisms  on  the  Pentateuch  and  the  book  of  Joshua, 
to  show  how  nearly  the  results  attained  by  a  great  Continental 
scholar  going  independently  over  the  same  ground  with  him- 
self corresponded  with  his  own.  Of  the  book,  generally,  he 
spoke  as  "  a  splendid  instance  of  clear  and  scholarly  criticism  "  ; 
and  undoubtedly  it  is  so.  But  its  extreme  brevity  and  its 
marvellous  compression  of  matter  detract  from  its  fitness  for 
popular  use ;  and  probably  for  English  minds  Professor 
Kuenen's  method  must  be  less  attractive  than  that  of  the 
Bishop,  which  places  the  evidence  for  each  statement  before 
the  reader,  and  leaves  to  him  the  responsibility  of  forming  his 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  223 

own  judgement.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  Professor 
Kuenen  regarded  the  Bishop's  main  position  as  estabhshed 
beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt.  This  position  rested  on  the 
composite  character  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  affirmed  it.  If 
these  books  are  the  production  of  different  writers,  then  only 
a  portion  of  them  can  be  the  work  of  Moses,  and  it  becomes 
possible  that  no  part  of  it  may  be  such.  In  comparison  with 
this  all  other  considerations  have  a  subordinate  interest.  The 
field  of  inquiry  is  thrown  open  to  all  workers  ;  and  the  deter- 
mination of  the  time  at  which  the  several  books  w^ere  written 
must  depend  wholly  on  the  evidence.  In  the  method  of 
making  this  search  the  scholars  of  the  Continent  exhibited  a 
remarkable  amount  of  agreement ;  and,  with  the  exception  of 
the  small  minority  who  still  strove  to  maintain  the  old  tradi- 
tional notion,  they  all  held  that  the  book  of  Deuteronomy 
was  the  work  of  a  writer  living  under  the  later  king-s  of 
Judah.  The  time  of  this  writer  might  be  fixed  in  the  reign 
of  Manasseh  ;  or  the  composition  of  the  book  might  be 
ascribed  to  that  of  Josiah.  This  was  a  matter  of  quite 
secondary  importance  as  compared  with  the  great  fact  that 
it  was  written  some  seven  or  eight  centuries  after  the  Mosaic 
age.  But  between  the  Bishop's  conclusions  and  those  of 
Professor  Kuenen  it  can  scarcely  be  said  that  there  was  any 
substantial  difference.  Such  points  of  divergence  as  there 
may  have  been  are  reserved  for  notice  in  our  survey  of  the 
Bishop's  examination  of  the  Pentateuch. 

Nor  does  this  translation  of  Kuenen's  book  make  up  all  the 
work  accomplished  by  the  Bishop  before  he  left  England  to 
return  to  his  diocese.  Almost  on  the  eve  of  his  departure 
he  published,  with  elaborate  notes  by  himself,  the  translation 
of  a  treatise  by  Dr.  Oort  on  the  worship  of  Baalim  in  Israel, 
based  on  Dr.  Dozy's  volume  on  the  Israelites  at  Mecca.  The 
subject  had  for  him  a  deep  interest,  as  indeed  it  must  have  for 
all  who  really  wish  to  ascertain  the  true  course  of  religious 


224  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

developement  both  in  Judah  and  in  Israel.  What  was  the 
origin,  and  what  was  the  character,  of  the  rehgion  which 
Mahomet  set  himself  either  to  reform  or  to  root  up  .''  By 
whom  and  when  was  the  sanctuary  at  Mecca  established  .-• 
and  what  relation,  if  any,  was  there  between  the  worship  in 
this  sanctuary  and  that  of  the  temples  of  Gibeon,  Gilgal,  or 
Jerusalem  ?  Dr.  Dozy's  researches  led  him  to  the  conclusion 
that 

"  din  Ibrahim,  the  old  religion  in  Arabia  .  .  .  was  a  remainder 
of  the  religion  of  the  Simeonites,  who  had  founded  the 
sanctuary," 

and  that 

"  the  great  festival  of  Islam  was  originally  an  Israelitish  feast." 
If  this  be  so,  then,  the  Bishop  remarks, 

"  we  have  here  given  us  a  new  source  of  help  towards  the 
knowledge  of  the  religious  condition  of  Israel  about  the 
time  when  the  tribe  of  Simeon  emigrated." 

With  the  question  of  the  time  of  this  emigration  the  Bishop 
dealt  in  the  first  appendix  to  his  Fifth  Part,  his  conclusion 
being  that  a  small  body  of  the  Simeonites  emigrated  shortly 
before  the  death  of  Saul,  the  greater  migration  occurring  at 
some  time  during  David's  reign.^  The  fact  of  the  connexion 
between  Mecca  and  the  Simeonites  seems  to  be  accurately 
ascertained  ;  and  in  the  fact  itself  there  is  nothing  surprising. 
It  is  simply  the  relationship  exhibited  in  the  genealogy  which 
makes  Isaac  and  Ishmael  brethren. 

"  In  fact,"  the  Bishop  remarks,  "the  religion  of  the  Israelites 
in  Palestine  and  that  of  the  Simeonites  at  Mecca  are  as 
twin  sisters,  who,  parted  in  youth  from  one  another,  have 
experienced  heaven-wide  differences  of  education,  so  that  in 


'  Part  v.,  Critical  Analysis  of  Genesis,  p.  269. 


1 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  225 

their  old  age  they  do  not  at  all  resemble  each  other,  while 
they  have  both  of  them  merely  slight  reminiscences  of  that 
which  has  made  them  what  the}^  are."  ^ 

But  this  calm  examination  of  facts  and  of  the  evidence  for 
them  carried  weight  only  amongst  the  few  who  had  no  other 
object  than  to  ascertain  the  truth.  The  effect  of  the  earlier 
parts  of  the  Bishop's  work  on  the  Pentateuch  in  this  country 
was  to  open  wide  the  flood-gates  of  theological  strife  and 
animosity.  In  almost  every  quarter  in  which  his  criticisms 
were  rejected,  they  were  rejected  with  a  vehemence  which 
showed  that  the  feeling  of  resentment  had  been  deeply 
stirred.  In  many  quarters  they  were  denounced  with  a 
bitterness  and  ferocity  which  revealed  how  far  the  iron  had 
entered  into  their  soul.  But  high  above  all  other  sounds  rose 
the  cry  of  anger  and  indignation  at  the  method  which  the 
I>ishop  had  chosen  to  employ  in  the  execution  of  his  task. 
He  had  laid  violent  hands  on  the  sacred  ark  of  the  popular 
belief  He  had  sedulously  instilled  doubts  into  the  minds  of 
the  ill-informed  and  the  half-educated.  He  was  like  a  critic 
who  could  do  nothing  more  than  point  out  the  flaws  of  a 
beautiful  picture  or  the  petty  blemishes  of  a  splendid  build- 
ing. He  had  exhibited  in  some  portions  of  sacred  books  diffi- 
culties, which  would  or  might  be  found  to  extend  through 
every  other  part  of  them.  He  had  shown  a  cynical  careless- 
ness for  the  consequences  of  his  destructive  arguments,  if  not 
a  malignant  eagerness  to  bring  about  a  collapse  of  all  belief. 
The  precautions  which  more  exact  or  more  charitable  thinkers 
would  feel  themselves  bound  to  take  he  had  refused'to  take. 
He  might  have  been  content  to  mark  the  beneficent  working 
of  Christianity,  and  have  convinced  himself  that  any  imper- 
fections in  that  work  were  more  than  compensated  by  the  vast 
benefits  bestowed  by  the  Church  upon  mankind.     He  might 

^  Worship  of  Baalim,  p.  4. 
VOL.  I.  O 


226  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

have  followed  the  advice  given  by  Horace  to  some  would-be 
poets,  and  have  left  his  manuscript  in  his  desk  for  nine  years. 
If  he  had  not  the  patience  to  do  this,  he  might  have  gone 
back  to  the  good  old  fashion,  and  might,  as  Dr.  Donaldson 
had  done  with  his  JasJiar,  have  clothed  his  thoughts  with  the 
decent  covering  of  a  foreign  tongue.  Why  could  he  not  write 
in  Latin  ?  and,  still  more,  why  should  he  write  at  all }  He 
had  not  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  no  God  or  that 
Christianity  is  a  delusion  ;^  and  if  he  had  not  done  so,  why 
should  he  lead  people  on  a  path  which  must  bring  them  to  that 
conclusion  .''  What  need  was  there  of  showing  that  some  of  the 
positions  occupied  by  Christian  teachers  or  thinkers  were 
untenable,  some  of  their  claims  and  beliefs  groundless,  and 
some  of  the  weapons  employed  by  them  against  opponents 
illegitimate  .-• 

No  single  sentence  can  return  an  answer  to  this  string  of 
questions.  Some  of  them  might  come  from  men  who,  con- 
scious of  the  faults  of  popular  methods,  were  doing  their  best 
in  other  ways  to  remove  them.  Others  might  be  asked  by 
men  who  were  resolved  to  maintain  a  system  which  they 
regarded  as  perfect,  and  to  inforce  their  shibboleth  on  all. 
Opponents  such  as  these  could  deserve  no  mercy.  But  the 
best  mode  of  dealing  with  the  Old  Testament,  as  with  any 
other  book,  might  remain,  nevertheless,  an  open  question. 
The  thought  of  England  had  not  been  stagnant  during  the 
quarter  of  a  century  which  preceded  the  publication  of  the 
Bishop's  book.  Many  an  old  superstition  had  been  exploded, 
many  narrow  and  exclusive  notions  had  been  got  rid  of,  many 
falsehoods  exposed  and  much  real  progress  made,  without 
causing  any  wide-spread  disquietude  or  creating  an  alarm 
which  might  be  easily  intensified  into  panic.  Such  good 
service  had  been  done  by  many  writers,  by  none  perhaps  more 
successfully  than  by  Dr.  Stanley. 

There  are  more  ways  than  one  of  doing  the  same  thing  ; 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  227 

and  of  this  no  one  was  more  aware  than  Dr.  Stanley,  who 
frankly  confessed  that  he  preferred  his  own  method  of  dealing 
with  the  Bible  to  that  of  Bishop  Colenso.  In  his  candid  and 
generous  speech  on  "  The  South  African  Controversy  in  its 
relations  to  the  Church  of  England,"  ^  he  draws  a  sharp 
contrast  between  the  two  methods. 

"  His  peculiar  style  of  criticism,"  he  said,  "  is  not  such  as  com- 
mends itself  to  me,  nor  is  his  mode  of  approaching  the 
Sacred  Volume  that  which  is  consonant  to  my  tastes  and 

feelings My   endeavour    has    been,    in    the    first 

instance,  to  get  whatever  there  is  of  good,  whatever  there  is 
of  elevation,  whatever  there  is  of  religious  instruction,  what- 
ever there  is  of  experience,  whatever  there  is  of  the  counsel 
of  God,  whatever  there  is  of  knowledge  of  the  heart  of  man, 
whatever  there  is  of  the  grace  of  poetry,  whatever  there  is 
of  historical  truth,  whatever  there  is  that  is  true,  honest, 
lovely,  of  good  report,  of  virtue,  and  of  praise  in  the 
highest  degree,  as  they  exist  nowhere  else  in  the  same 
degree,  in  the  Sacred  Scripture.  .  .  .  That  I  think  is  the 
best  way  of  approaching  the  Bible." 

Of  the  beauty  of  this  method,  and  of  the  great  benefits  to 
be  derived  from  it,  there  can  be  no  question.  But  it  has  this 
marked  characteristic,  that  it  does  its  destructive  work  with- 
out calling  attention  to  it ;  that  it  generally  keeps  the 
process  out  of  sight  ;  and  that  its  destructive  effects  may  be 
more  far-reaching  than  those  of  more  direct  assault.  Dr. 
Stanley  saw,  for  instance,  how  marvellously  Samson  differs 
from  all  other  Jews  before  or  after  him  :  so  in  a  few  sentences 
he  speaks  of  his  love  of  practical  jokes  and  his  frolicsome  and 
irregular  exploits,  thus  leaving  the  impression  that  a  per- 
sonage so  utterly  unlike  his  countrymen  in  all  his  essential 
features  must  be  an  importation  from  the  traditions  ol 
some  other  tribe  or  nation.      So,  again,  to  give  point  to  the 

^  Oxford  and  London,  James  Parker  and  Co.,  1867. 

Q2 


2  28  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  vi. 

ceaseless  remonstrances  and  denunciations  of  the  prophets,  he 
remarks  that  the  national  religion  of  the  Jews  down  to  the 
Babylonish  captivity  was  the  sensual  and  bloody  idolatry  of 
the  Ashera,  or  "  grove,"  and  that  the  prophets  were  an  insig- 
nificantly small  minority  of  earnest  and  pure-minded  men 
who  carried  on  a  vain  fight  against  these  abominations. 
Nothing  could  be  more  true  ;  but  the  implication  is  that  the 
history  of  the  books  of  the  Pentateuch,  of  the  Kings,  and, 
immeasurably  more,  of  the  Chronicles,  is  inexact  and  un- 
trustworthy. If  the  religion  of  the  whole  nation  was  of 
this  sort  in  the  days  of  Hezekiah  and  Josiah,  then  the  whole 
system  of  the  Levitical  law,  if  it  was  ever  carried  out  at  all, 
must  belong  to  a  still  later  age.  That  this  should  be  the 
condition  of  a  people  who  had  heard  in  the  wilderness  the 
magnificent  discourses  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  was 
inconceivable  ;  and  in  this  case,  these  discourses  must  have 
been  put  together  in  some  later  centuries.  Dr.  Stanley's 
method,  therefore,  although  it  may  seem  to  give  only,  or 
chiefly,  positive  results,  is  yet  to  a  high  degree  negative.  It 
is  none  the  worse  on  this  account ;  and  it  might  be  pleasanter 
to  confine  ourselves  to  it  altogether,  were  there  not  other 
enemies  to  be  fought  with,  other  barriers  to  be  surmounted,  other 
stumbling-blocks  to  be  moved  out  of  the  way.  Dr.  Stanley's 
method,  always  (perhaps)  more  inviting,  is  also  fully  justified, 
so  long  as  it  is  addressed  to  those  who  are  capable  of 
appreciating  it.  To  those  who  lack  the  historical  faculty,  his 
words  might  come  with  a  pleasant  sound,  but  they  would 
produce  on  them  no  great  impression.  To  those  who  might 
be  perplexed  and  distressed  by  the  seeming  fact  that  an 
infallible  book  displayed  some  mistakes,  blunders,  inconsis- 
tencies, and  contradictions,  his  method  would  seem  much 
like  an  evasion  or  slurring  over  of  difficulties, — would  seem,  in 
short,  not  altogether  ingenuous.  But  Dr.  Stanley  was  far  too 
earnest  a  lover  of  the  truth  to  allow  the  notion  to  get  abroad 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  229 

that  he  condemned  the  work  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  His 
own  mode  of  dealing  with  the  Bible  was,  he  knew,  not  the 
only  mode. 

"  Although  Dr.  Colenso's  mode  may  not  commend  itself  to 
me  as  the  best,  it  may  do  so  to  other  minds  ;  and  there- 
fore I  could  never  bring  myself  to  condemn  any  mode  .... 
however  different  from  mine  it  may  be,  supposing  always 
that  it  is  a  bona  fide  honest  attempt  to  ascertain  what  is 
the  nature  of  the  Sacred  Books,  and  to  draw  instruction 

from  them He  has  thought  it  his  duty  to  endeavour 

to  ascertain,  as  far  as  possible,  the  dates  and  authors  of 
those  several  books,  and  that  by  a  minute  and  laborious 
analysis,  which  has  hardly  ever  been  surpassed  by  any 
divine  of  the  Church  of  England." 

But  it  was  not  for  Dr.  Stanley's  hearers  or  readers  that  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  was  writing.  Was  there,  or  was  there  not, 
throughout  the  English  Church,  a  state  of  feeling  about  the 
letter  of  the  Bible,  the  expression  of  which  looked  much 
like  an  admission  of  fetish-worship .''  Was  there,  or  was 
there  not,  a  self-contradictory  teaching  with  regard  to  the 
value  and  authority  of  sacred  books,  which  could  only  be- 
wilder, mislead,  and  corrupt .''  Were  not  thousands  mentally 
and  morally  weakened  by  the  abject  superstition  which 
treated  appearances  of  error  as  in  no  way  impairing  their 
infallibility  .''  If  it  was  so,  how  could  this  deadly  disease 
be  arrested  by  Dr.  Stanley's  method  }  The  disease  was,  in 
truth,  raging. 

"  The  Bible,"  Mr.  Burgfon  had  said,^  "  is  none  other  than  the 
voice  of  Him  that  sitteth  upon  the  throne.  Every  book  of 
it,  every  chapter  of  it,  every  verse  of  it,  every  word  of  it, 
every  syllable  of  it  (where  are  we  to  stop  ?),  every  letter  of 
it,  is  the  direct  utterance  of  the  Most  High.  The  Bible  is 
none  other  than  the  Word  of  God,  not  some  part  of  it  more 

'  Insph-aiicm  (Did  Intcrpf'cfation,  p.  89. 


230  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

some  part  of  it  less,  but  all  alike,  the  utterance  of  Him  who 
sitteth  upon  the  throne,  absolute, — faultless, — unerring, — 
supreme." 

Yet  the  same  writer,  who  could  give  expression  to  what  is 
either  frantic  folly  or  mere  blasphemy,^  could  advise  young 
students  to 

"  approach  the  volume  of  Holy  Scripture  with  the  same  can- 
dour and  the  same  unprejudiced  spirit  with  which  you 
would  approach  any  other  famous  book  of  high  antiquity. 
Study  it  with,  at  least,  the  same  attention.     Give,  at  least 

equal  heed  to  all  its  statements Above  all,  beware 

of  playing  tricks  with  its  plain  language.  ...  Be  truthful, 
and  unprejudiced,  and  honest,  and  consistent,  and  logical, 
and  exact  throughout,  in  your  work  of  interpretation." 

But  this  freedom  from  prejudice,  this  honesty,  this  truthfulness, 
must  bring  them  to  Mr.  Burgon's  conclusions,  must  leave  them 
convinced  that  every  sentence,  every  letter  of  the  Bible  is  as 
absolute,  faultless,  unerring,  supreme  as  He  whose  direct  and 
immediate  work  it  is.  Thus  we  have  a  pretence  of  freedom 
with  the  reality  of  an  abject  slavery.  It  was  more  than 
superstition  ;  it  was  mere  madness.  Were  there  none  who 
would  feel  it  their  duty  to  arrest  its  progress  1  Of  the  nature 
and  extent  of  the  disease  there  could  be  no  question.  Mr. 
Garbett  had  declared  that 

"  in  all  consistent  reason  we  must  accept  the  whole  of  the 
inspired  autographs,  or  reject  the  whole  as  from  end  to 
end  unauthoritative  and  worthless  ; " 

and  in  a  manual  on  Verbal  Inspiration^  Dr.  Baylee,  the  prin- 
cipal of  one  of  the  most  important  theological  colleges  in  the 
kingdom,  had  laid  it  down  that 

"  every  word,  every  syllable,  every  letter  [of  the  Bible]  is  just 

^  If  the  Bible  be  the  Word  of  God  (the  Church  of  England  has  never 
said  that  it  is  so),  would  Dean  Burgon  apply  to  the  Bible  the  phrases  in 
which  the  first  chapter  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  speaks  of  the  Divine  Word  ? 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  231 

what  it  would  be,  had  God  spoken  from  heaven  without  any 
human  intervention.^  .  .  .  Every  scientific  statement  is 
infallibly  accurate,  all  its  history  and  narratives  of  every 
kind  are  without  any  inaccuracy.  The  words  and  phrases 
have  a  grammatical  and  philological  accuracy  such  as  is 
possessed  by  no  human  composition." 

These  utterances  are  not  much  more  than  an  echo  of  Dean 
Burgon's  words,  and  indeed  are  not  worthy  of  attention, 
except  as  evidence  of  the  extent  to  which  these  absurdities 
were  gravely  maintained  at  the  time  when  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  came  to  do  battle  with  this  gross  superstition.  The 
character  and  incidents  of  the  fight  will  best  be  described  in 
the  Bishop's  letters. 

"To  John  Merrifield,  Esq.  {a  friend  from  boyhood). 

"  Kensington,  November  29,  1862. 

"  My  dear  old  Friend, 

"  I  was  rejoiced  to  get  your  first  letter,  just  as  I  was  starting 
for  Cheshire.  I  took  it  with  me,  meaning  to  answer  it,  but 
brought  it  back  unanswered,  and  now  have  received  the 
second.  I  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  both,  and  for  all 
the  words  of  encouragement  which  you  have  sent  me. 
Thank  God,  I  am  not  at  all  troubled  by  the  storm  which 
rages  around  me.  Perhaps  my  colonial  experience  has 
helped  me  in  this  respect.  To  tell  you  the  truth,  it  is  such 
a  joyous  thing  to  feel  the  solid  rock  under  one's  feet,  that 
I  have  to  guard  against  being  too  regardless  of  the  feelings 
of  others.  TJiey  cannot  see  what  I  see  plainly  as  the 
sun  in  the  sky.  And  I  must  allow  for  the  bitterness  and 
even  anguish  of  spirit  which  many  good  people  will  feel 
certainly  at  first,  while  they  think  that  I  am  only  taking 

*  The  words  look  much  like  nonsense.  If  they  have  any  meaning,  they 
affirm  that  there  are  not,  and  that  there  cannot  be,  any  corruptions  of  the 
text  in  the  Old  Testament  or  the  New.  With  many  writers  the  allegation 
of  corruptions  in  the  text  is  a  favourite  plea  for  evading  difficulties. 


232  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

away  from  them  all  the  light  of  their  life.  I  do  not  intend 
to  answer  any  anonymous  writers.  I  had  a  particular 
reason  for  writing  one  letter  to  the  Telegraph,  and  perhaps 
I  had  better  not  have  written  it.  Happily,  I  have  several 
good  men  at  hand  to  help  me  in  replying  to  adversaries. 
I  cannot  but  hope  that  the  cause  of  Truth  is  gaining  ground 
daily." 

To  his  friend  Mr.  Shepstone/  in  Natal,  he  writes  : — 

"  Septetnber  4,  1862. 

"  We  have  now  been  a  month  in  England,  and  you  may 
suppose  that  I  am  by  this  time  deep  in  my  work,  the 
magnitude  and  importance  of  which  increases  daily  in  the 
estimation  of  others  as  well  as  myself  ...  It  is  true  that 
Lushington's  recent  judgement  would  bring  me  under  sen- 
tence in  two  points.  .  .  .  But  I  think  I  may  say  that  no 
sensible  person  in  England  supposes  that  judgement  will  be 
maintained.  ...  It  is  the  most  inconsistent  and  unfortunate 
judgement  that  has  ever  been  given.  Professor  Grote,  of 
Cambridge,  a  first-rate  man,  writing  from  the  orthodox 
point  of  view  in  a  most  temperate  manner,  has  expressed 
the  alarm  which  he  and  all  other  intelligent  clergymen  must 
feel  at  having  one,  if  not  two,  new  articles  made  for  them 
besides  the  thirty-nine,  by  a  mere  stroke  of  the  pen  in  a 
lawyer's  study, — for  so  it  really  is.  The  judgement  does 
more  than  all  the  Convocation  could  do  by  months  of  dis- 
cussion ;  and,  as  Professor  Grote  says,  lays  the  clergy  under 
a  yoke  the  tyranny  of  which  is  quite  insufferable.  Strangely 
enough,  however,  the  very  same  judgement  allows  me  free 
licence  to  publish  my  new  book  without  fear  of  coming 
under  Church  censure.  You  may  now  discuss  the  authen- 
ticity of  Genesis  and  criticise  it  as  much  as  you  please  ; 
only  you  must  be  able  to  say  that  you  '  believe  in  all  the 

■»—  canonical  Scriptures,'  meaning  only  thereby  that  you  be- 
lieve that  all  things  necessary  to  salvation  are  contained 
in  the  Bible,  and  that   to  that  extent   it   has  the  direct 

^  See  Ten  Weeks  in  A^atal,  throughout. 


\ 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  233 

sanction  of  the  Almighty.  This,  of  course,  any  one  could 
say,  who  believes  that  the  fear,  and  faith,  and  love  of  God 
are  taught  in  the  Bible,  and  that,  so  far  as  the  words  of  man 
teach  such  Divine  truths,  the  writer's  heart  must  have  been 
taught  by  the  Spirit  of  God  to  utter  them.  Now  whatever 
the  judgement  has  given  is  ground  gained  for  ever.  This 
part  will  not  be  appealed  against,  and  therefore  it  practically 
stands  as  henceforward  the  law  of  the  English  Church. 
.  .  .  My  belief  is  that  a  strong  effort  will  be  made  next 
session  of  Parliament  to  procure  the  repeal  of  the  Act  of 
Uniformity." 

To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"6  Crescent,  Blackfriars, 
''October  2,  1862. 

.  ..."  I  had  a  very  pleasing  letter  from  Magema  by  this 
mail.  ...  It  is  quite  refreshing  to  receive  such  a  letter  from 
him,  in  which  he  expresses  most  heartily  his  deep  sense  of 
all  the  kindness  he  has  received  from  us  and  his  determina- 
tion to  be  my  child  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  I  long  to  come 
back  to  you  all,  and  I  am  not  without  hope  that  I  shall." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  London,  November  4,  1862. 
.  .  .  .  "  Last  Wednesday  the  book.  Part  I.,  was  published.  .  .  . 
It  is  not  yet  a  week  from  the  day  of  publication,  and  the 
fourth  edition  is  in  the  press,  though  the  second  will  only 
be  ready  for  delivery  to-day.  This  fourth  edition  will 
complete  10,000  copies." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place,  Kensington, 
"December  29,  1862. 

.  .  .  .  "I  am  printing  Part  II.,  which  I  hope  will  be  ready 
before  the  meeting  of  Convocation,  when  no  doubt,  a  grand 
discussion  will  take  place.  I  am  in  very  good  heart  upon 
the  whole   matter, — am    still   Bishop  of  Natal,  and  as  far 


234  UFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vu 

as  I  can  see  at  present,  am  likely  to  remain  so.  I  shall 
certainly,  as  at  present  advised,  not  resign  ;  and  it  seems  to 
be  exceedingly  doubtful  if  they  can  eject  me  under  any 
circumstances.  However,  time  will  show,  and  I  am  pre- 
pared for  anything.  One  thing  I  am  resolved  on,  to  go 
steadily  forward  with  my  book,  whatever  may  be  the  con- 
sequences. The  movement,  however,  is  begun  v^hich  will 
end/  I  cannot  doubt,  in  a  revolution  of  the  English  Church. 
.  .  .  The  attempt  is  made,  of  course,  in  every  way  possible 
to  vilify  me,  and  decry  my  book.  A  certain  Mr.  McCaul, 
son  of  Dr.  McCaul,  Divinity  Professor  at  King's  College, 
London,  has  written  to  the  Record  and  gives  out  that  he 
has  picked  a  hole  in  my  scholarship.  Fortunately  I  have 
received  very  interesting  letters  from  some  of  the  first 
scholars  in  England  and  Europe,  which  are  all  that  I  need 
desire.  ...  I  have  also  a  very  favourable  letter  from  Pro- 
fessor Hupfeld,  of  Halle,  one  of  the  most  eminent  German 
critics.  ...  It  is  hopeless  to  do  anything  until  I  can  arouse 
the  laity  ;  and  thank  God,  I  am  reaching  tJiem,  I  hope, 
effectually.  ...  I  see  no  reason  to  suppose  that  I  shall  not 
return  to  Natal,  as  Bishop,  wnth  full  power  to  make  any 
reform,  not  compulsory  of  course,  but  when  desired  by 
congregations,  as  may  be  needed.  ...  I  do  not  mean  that 
by  that  time  the  law  will  be  altered  by  Parliament,  for  it 
will  be  a  long  and  slow  work  to  change  thoroughly  the  laws 
of  the  Church  in  England.  But  the  work  will  have  begun, 
and  the  very  best  thing  to  help  it  forward  would  be  to  see 
the  reformation  actually  in  progress,  as  I  hope  it  may  be^ 
in  Natal." 


f 


"To  THE  Rev.  A.  \V.  L.  Rivett  {one  of  the  clergy  of  J  lis 

diocese). 

"  Kensington, /«/?/^a;7  4,  1863. 
"I  have   now  published   another  book,  of  which,  of  course^l 
some  tidings  will  reach  you.     I  have  sent  some  copies  for 

^  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Bishop  did  not  reckon  upon  this  end 
as  likely  to  come  in  his  own  time.  His  words  will  remain  true,  if  the 
movement  should  go  on  for  a  century. 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  235 

sale  to  the  care  of  Mr.  Foster  by  mail-steamer.  Perhaps 
you  can  aid  him  in  the  matter.  But  I  have  not  made 
presents  of  the  book  to  any  of  the  clergy  (except  my 
commissary),  as  I  do  not  wish  to  press  my  opinions  upon 
any  of  them,  otherwise  I  should  send  a  copy  to  you.  Should 
you  hear  it  said  that  I  am  about  to  resign  my  see,  you  are 
at  liberty  to  contradict  it.  I  have  no  present  intention  to 
do  anything  of  the  kind  ;  but  I  intend  to  fight  the  battle  of 
liberty  of  thought  and  speech  for  the  clergy." 


"To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"  23  Sussex  Place,  January  26,  1863. 
"  It  is  impossible  not  to  see  that  the  reformation  now  begun 
will  be  of  the  deepest  and  most  extreme  character.  The 
men  of  science  and  literature  are  almost  in  a  body  with  me. 
I  have  seen  a  great  deal  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell.  .  .  .  He  is 
about  sixty-five  years  old,  I  should  think ;  a  very  pleasing, 
intelligent,  venerable  man,  in  a  green  and  active  old  age. 
And  he  too  has  just  completed,  and  in  a  few  days  will 
publish,  a  work  on  the  antiquity  of  the  human  race  which 
will  entirely  support  my  views  and  utterly  upset  the 
orthodox  view  of  the  degradation  of  man.  ...  I  have  just 
come  from  a  very  interesting  visit  to  an  old  gentleman 
(foreign  translator  at  the  Foreign  Office),  Mr.  Norris,  who 
seems  to  know  every  language  under  the  sun.  .  .  .  He 
showed  me  a  very  curious  MS.  of  the  Vei  language.  This 
is  the  language  of  a  lost  African  people.  And  it  seems  that 
a  native  of  that  country  went  once  to  visit  one  of  our 
settlements,  and  there  saw  an  English  book.  He  caught 
the  idea  of  an  alphabet  at  once,  went  home,  and  made  a 
syllabarium  for  himself,  i.e.  characters  to  represent  not 
mere  letters,  but  elementary  syllables.  .  .  .  Accordingly, 
here  was  a  long  MS.  written  by  himself  in  these  characters. 
It  told  the  tale  of  a  journey  made  by  a  native  into  the 
interior,  and  introduced  an  old  story  which,  Mr.  Norris  says, 
occurs  almost  identically  the  same  in  an  old  Cornish  legend. 
It  is  to  this  effect.    A  man  went  to  serve  a  master  for  wacres. 


236  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

...  At  the  end  of  his  time  the  master  gave  him  his  choice, 
to  be  paid  in  money  or  in  advice.  He  chose  the  latter, 
and  worked  on,  till  he  had  received  three  pieces  of  advice, 
and  no  money.  Then  he  went  home,  taking  a  cake  which 
his  master  had  given  him  to  eat  with  his  wife,  in  the  middle 
of  which  they  found  all  the  money.  As  to  the  three  pieces 
of  advice,  he  applied  them  on  three  several  occasions,  and 
saved  his  life  in  consequence."  ' 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place,  March  2,  1863. 

.  .  .  ,  "  The  day  after  I  was  turned  out  of  S.P.G.  [from  the 
list  of  Vice-Presidents]  I  was  admitted  into  the  Athenseum 
— by  invitation  from  the  Committee.  The  Governor  will 
know  that  this  is  a  great  victory,  as  it  is  the  stronghold  of 
the  dignified  ecclesiastics.  Dean  Trench  violently  opposed 
my  admission  ;  but  the  Committee  carried  me  in  by  9  to  3. 

.  .  .  .  "  All  sorts  of  lying  paragraphs  are  inserted  in  the 
journals  by  way  of  damaging  my  position, — one  that  my 
new  book  was  lying  a  dead  weight  on  the  shelves  of  the 
publishers.  Ans.  Nearly  8,000  copies  sold  in  three  weeks. 
Another  that  nothing  is  known  of  my  intentions,  but  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown  will  administer  my  diocese  till  I  have 
made  up  my  mind.  Ans.  I  fully  intend  to  return  to  my 
diocese  as  soon  as  I  have  done  the  work  for  which  I  came 
to  England 

"  On  Saturday  I  received  a  round  robin  from  the  Archbishop 

and  Bishops  except  Hereford  (Hampden) My  answer 

is  in  preparation  and  will  be  calm  and  decisive.  I  tell  them 
that  I  have  no  intention  of  resigning  ;  that  the  '  scandal ' 
they  complain  of  is  not  caused  by  me,  but  by  those  who 
maintain  a  state  of  things  in  the  Church  opposed  to  the 
plainest  results  of  modern  science.  The  fact  is  that  these 
'  round  robins '  have  become  ridiculous,  through  their  famous 
attempts  in  that  line  upon  the  Essays  and  Reviews  and 

1  This  story  appears  also  in  an  Irish  tale,  under  the  title  of  "John 
Carson's  Wag-es." 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  237 

Sabbath  questions.  There  is  not  a  man  among  them  ;  but 
they  are  obliged  to  flock  together,  Hke  sheep  running  through 
a  gate,  when  one  leads  the  way." 

To  Sir  Charles  Lyell. 

"  Kensington,  February  27,  1863. 
"  The  Record  thinks  that  you  will  be  much  offended  by  my 
introduction  to  the  Athenaeum.  You  will  be  amused  with 
their  leader  in  Friday's  paper.  Though  such  a  friend,  it 
seems,  to  their  principles,  I  believe  that  you  do  not  take  in, 
as  I  do,  that  respectable  journal." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Kensington,  March  6,  1863. 
"  I  had  an  hour's  talk  with  the  Bishop  of  London  [Tait]  by 
appointment  on  Wednesday  last,  about  which  I  will  talk 
to  you  on  Wednesday  next,  if  I  have  not  the  pleasure  of 
meeting  you  before.  He  then  spoke  of  your  book  as  lying 
on  the  table,  and  seemed  to  think  that  it  was  quite  possible 
to  hold  both  it  and  the  Bible  stor}-  as  true  in  some  sense!' 

To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"  Sussex  Pl.'Vce,  April  5,  1863. 
"  The  Bishops  ....  are  one  by  one  forbidding  me  to  preach 
and  minister  in  their  dioceses,  &c.,  as  if  I  cared  for  that 
when  my  books  enter  into  so  man}'  houses,  and  are  wel- 
comed, thank  God,  by  so  many  hearts,  and  when,  if  I  had  a 
desire  to  preach,  God's  great  House  is  ever  open  to  me  ; 
and  the  Bishop  of  London  is  an  example  to  me  of  the 
propriety  of  open-air  preaching.  No  doubt  I  shall  manage 
to  address  my  old  Norfolk  parishioners  in  this  way  before  I 
leave  England,  if  the  embargo  is  not  taken  off." 

To   THE   SAME. 

^^  May  I,  1863. 

..."  The  change  has  been  decidedl}'  in  my  favour  since  I 
last  wrote,  owing  to  the  line  of  conduct  which  the  Bishops 


238  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

have  adopted  .  .  .  viz.  to  anathematize  instead  of  answering 
me.  This  does  not  satisfy  the  Enghsh  mind,  and  I  have 
numerous  letters  in  consequence  from  clergy  as  well  as  laity. 
However,  my  next  book  will  bring  matters  to  a  crisis.  I 
am   hard   at  work   upon    it,  and    have   it    more   than   half 

printed Canon   Stanley  has  just  printed  a  letter  to 

the  Bishop  of  London,  urging  the  abolition  of  subscription 
to  the  Articles  and  Liturgy,  which  implies  more  than  it 
says — viz.  that  the  Bishop  of  London  is  not  averse  to  some 
such  measure 

^'  What  Bishop  Gray  is  going  to  do  in  my  case  is  at  present 

quite  unknown  to  us  here  in  England Now,  as  I  am 

entirely  protected  by  Lushington's  judgement  for  what  I 
have  said  about  the  Pentateuch,  and  as  I  shall  be  able  to 
show  in  my  next  preface  that  I  am  equally  supported,  in 
regard  to  the  suggestions  which  I  have  made  about  our 
Lord's  ignorance  of  matters  of  human  science,  by  some  of 
the  highest  authorities  in  our  Church,  I  do  not  believe  that 
he  can  do  anything 

*'  In  one  word,  I  am  as  strong,  and  cheerful,  and  full  of  hope 

as  ever The  '  Church  Union '  has   had  a  meeting, 

where  they  have  seriously  discussed  the  following  question : 
'  Whereas  Bishop  Colenso's  Part  I.  was  full  of  errors  in 
Hebrew,  and  Part  H.  shows  a  masterly  acquaintance  with 
the  language,  ought  we  not  to  apply  to  him  to  know  by 
whom  he  has  been  assisted  .■' '  The  fact  is  that  the  errors  in 
Part  I.  are  all  mythical.  They  took  it  for  granted  that  I 
could  not  possibly  know  Hebrew,  and  find  to  their  surprise 
that  I  know  more  about  it  than  they  imagined.  .  .  .  There 
are  only  two  trivial  errors,  of  not  the  slightest  consequence 
to  the  argument,  but  mere  oversights  from  following  the 
English  version  without  referring  to  the  originals, — one  in 
Part  I.,  the  other  in  Part  H., — which  have  been  brought  to 
light  by  the  most  hawk-eyed  criticism  ;  for  I  need  not  tell 
you  that  every  line  has  been  greedily  searched  for  some- 
thing to  throw  at  me  by  way  of  reproach.  I  am,  therefore, 
quite  at  ease  on  this  point." 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  239 

To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"  Sussex  Place, /^/■;7(?  2,  1863. 

,..."!  think  you  will  see  that  the  Convocation  have  done 
the  very  best  thing  they  could  for  me.  ...  If  this  is  all  the 
heresy  they  can  find  after  nine  days'  searching  by  the  most 
eminent  divines  of  England,  it  will  follow  that  my  position 
is  considerably  stronger  than  even  I  myself  had  imagined- 
You  are  quite  right  about  the  necessity  of  my  doing  the 
work  completely  Jiere.  .  .  . 

*'  You  will  see  that  the  Bishop  of  London  (Tait)  does  not  act 
with  the  other  Bishops.  T/iej',  headed  by  the  Bishop  of 
Oxford,  have  cut  me  dead.  But  I  met  him  in  Pall  Mall  a 
few  days  ago,  where  he  was  walking  arm-in-arm  with  another 
Bishop,  and  I  was  going  to  pass  him  with  a  salutation. 
But  he  made  a  point  of  shaking  me  heartily  by  the  hand, 
and  stopping  to  ask  me  some  friendly  question — the  other 
standing  mute  all  the  while.  I  could  not  see  who  it  was  : 
perhaps  he  did  not  know  me.  ...  A  friend  told  me  that 
after  the  debate  on  Lord  Ebury's  motion  (for  abolishing 
Subscription)  he  had  heard  Lord  Derby  say  to  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  '  Another  such  debate,  and  the 
question  of  Subscription  will  be  settled.'  It  is  felt  that  ^ 
Subscription  is  doomed  since  the  late  division.  .  ,  . 

*'  Speaking  generally  the  coivardice  of  men  in  England  is 
something  amazing.  The  truth  will  prevail,  I  doubt  not ; 
but  it  is  painful  to  mc  how  little  love  of  truth  there  is 
among  those  from  whom  one  hoped  most.  I  see  that  the 
Metropolitan  is  going  to  take  some  measure  against  me. 
And  it  is  plain  from  his  reply  to  his  clergy  that  what  I  have 
all  along  believed  is  true,  viz.,  that  the  '  letters  of  inhibition  ' 
were  part  of  a  concerted  scheme,  planned  by  the  Bishop  of 
Oxford  and  others,'  by  which  they  hoped  to  get  up  '  public 
opinion'  against  me.  In  this,  however,  they  have  signally 
failed.  The  only  effect  of  these  letters  has  been  to  enlist  a 
great  deal  more  of  public  opinion  on  my  side.  .  .  .  An  old 

^  We  have  for  this  the  admission  of  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  himself, 
see  p.  17s,  note. 


240  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

gentleman  writes  to  me  that  he  has  just  seen  Professor 
Hitzig,  of  Heidelberg,  probably  the  best  Hebraist  in  Europe, 
Avho  said  to  him  :  '  Your  Bishops  are  making  themselves  the 
laughter  of  all  Europe.  Every  Hebraist  knows  that  the 
animal  mentioned  in  Leviticus  is  really  the  hare.  The 
word  is  derived  from  the  Arabic,  and  has  the  same  meaning 
in  both  languages.  Every  physicist  knows  that  it  does  not 
chew  the  cud.  But  most  of  all  is  it  ridiculous  to  assume 
that  there  are  no  physical  errors  in  the  Pentateuch.'  M\' 
Jiare  has  been  running  a  pretty  round  since  I  last  wrote, 
and  done  excellent  service  to  the  cause  of  truth, — the  matter 
being  perfectly  within  the  grasp  of  every  old  hunting  squire. 
The  following  epigram  has  been  going  the  round  of  the 
Clubs,  and  may  amuse  you  : 

'"  The  Bishops  all  have  sworn  to  shed  their  blood, 
To  prove  'tis  true  the  Hare  doth  chew  the  cud  ; 
O  Bishops,  Doctors,  and  Divines,  beware  ! 
Weak  is  the  faith  that  hangs  upon  a  Hair  ! '" 

To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"  Sussex  Place, //^«^  24,  1863. 

.  ..."  I  think  you  will  see  by  the  papers  of  this  mail  that 
my  hopes  have  been  fulfilled,  and  my  Part  HI.  has  put 
me  (as  Dean  Milman  says  in  a  private  letter  which  I  saw) 
'on  much  higher  ground.'  In  reality,  there  is  no  difference 
whatever  in  the  '  level.'  He  says  that  whereas  before  I  was 
only  destructive,  now  I  am  constructive  ;  and  I  dare  say 
that  others  will  say  the  same.  And  if  they  choose  to  say 
so,  they  are  welcome  for  my  part  to  do  so. 

"  It  is  their  best  way,  I  suppose,  of  getting  out  of  the  difficulty 
into  which  their  own  mistake  of  the  nature  of  my  work  has 
carried  them.  Nothing,  however,  could  have  happened 
more  favourably  for  my  purpose  than  the  course  which  has 
been  followed  under  the  advice  (I  doubt  not)  of  the  Bishop 
of  Oxford.  It  is  evident  that  they  have  entirely  mis- 
apprehended the  whole  nature  of  my  undertaking.  They 
took  it  for  granted  that  a  mere  '  arithmetician '  would  know 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND -THE  BATTLE.  241 

nothing  of  Hebrew  criticism — and  the  contents  of  my  first 
volume  confirmed  them  in  this,  as  it  contained  chiefly 
arithmetical  arguments,  although  one  at  all  acquainted  with 
the  subject  would  have  perceived  glimpses  of  another  kind 
of  criticism  in  the  midst  of  my  calculations. 

"  I  have  now  finished  about  half  my  work,  and  hope  at  the 
end  of  twelve  months  to  have  completed  it.  Then,  as  far 
as  I  can  now  see,  I  shall  prepare  to  leave  for  Natal,  and  the 
sight  of  the  Zulu  handwriting  which  reached  me  from 
William,  Magema,  and  Umkungo  this  morning,  makes  me 
feel  quite  a  longing  to  be  back  again  among  them. 

"Part  III.  was  published  last  Thursday,  4,000  copies,  and 
already  the  second  edition  of  1,500  is  in  the  press.  The 
two  former  parts  are  also  selling  steadily.  A  gentleman 
was  introduced  to  me  at  the  Athenaeum  two  or  three  days 
ago,  who  told  me  that  he  had  just  come  from  Rome,  and 
the  book  was  producing  an  immense  sensation  all  over  the 
Continent.  At  Rome  he  went  into  a  Jesuit's  room,  and 
found  him  deep  in  the  study  of  it.  He  then  went  to  the 
room  of  another  Jesuit,  and  found  him  similarly  engaged. 
Manning  has  been  preaching  at  Rome  about  it,  and  of 
course  the  Romish  Church  triumphs  at  the  perplexities  of 
Protestantism,  and  calls  on  every  one  to  come  and  put  him- 
self under  the  direction  of  the  infallible  Church,  which  can 
do  without  the  Bible.  ...  Of  course  I  am  brought  into 
daily  connexion  with  all  the  great  men  of  science,  who  are 
warmly  with  me.  .  .  . 

"  I  was  invited  by  the  head  master  of  Harrow  to  the  speeches, 
with  Mrs.  Colenso,  last  Thursday.  ...  It  is  usual  for  the 
school  to  take  note  of  their  friends,  when  they  come  out  of 
the  recitations,  by  calling  out  their  names  for  cheers.  And 
it  may  show  how  the  tide  has  turned  to  mention  (though  I 
would  only  do  it  to  a  friend  such  as  you)  that  the  lads  gave 
me  a  hearty  double  set  of  cheers,  in  presence  of  my  arch- 
opponents,  Dr.  Wordsworth  and  Dean  Trench.  .  .  . 

"Please  keep  itp  the  lieaits  of  my  poor  people  at  Bishop- 
stowe." 

VOL.  I.  R 


242  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

To   THE   SAME. 

"Sussex  Place,  July  23,  1863. 

"  My  third  preface  has  produced  great  effect,  and  almost 
silenced  my  adversaries.  Indeed,  not  a  word  is  now  said 
about  my  leaving  the  Church.  It  is  felt  that,  if  I  am  to  go, 
then  Dean  Milman,  Canon  Stanley,  and  a  host  of  our  most 
distinguished  men,  must  go  also.  .  .  . 

"  I  think  that  your  document  leaves  you  full  authority  to 
act  for  me.  If  you  have  not  already  had  occasion  to 
interfere,  I  now  request  you  to  take  such  steps  as  may  be 
necessary  to  carry  on  the  operations  at  Bishopstowe,  the 
printing  of  Kafir  books,  and  the  preaching  at  St.  Mary's 
(which,  being  unconsecrated,  is  merely  a  building  erected 
on  ground  for  which  I  am  trustee,  and  you,  therefore,  acting 
trustee).  .  .  .  Do  not  let  the  Dean  take  possession  of  my 
trust  property.  Better  that  places  should  remain  vacant 
till  my  return,  which  I  shall  hasten  as  much  as  possible." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place,  August  26,  1863. 
.  ..."  I  send  by  this  mail  a  copy  of  Mr.  Wilson's  address  to 
the  Privy  Council,  which  I  think  you  will  pronounce  to  be 
a  most  masterly  document.  It  is  generally  understood 
that  they,  Wilson  and  Williams,  will  completely  reverse  the 
unfavourable  part  of  Lushington's  judgement  ;  and  of  course 
the  favourable  part  stands  good  as  ever.  ,  Wilson's  argu- 
ments   completely   cover    my    own    case.       It   would    be 

\ ridiculous    for    the    Bishop    of    Capetown    to    pass    any 

judgement  on  me,  if  Wilson  succeeds.^  .  ,  . 
"  Magema  has  written  to  me  a  capital  English  letter  -  this  time, 
saying  that  he  will  have  finished  the  New  Testament  and 

^  This  would  have  been  strictly  true,  if  Bishop  Gray  proposed  to  exer- 
cise a  jurisdiction  which  would  be  recognised  by  English  courts.     So  soon 
as  he  took  to  what  he  deemed  spiritual  processes  and  spiritual  sentences, 
.      he  could  act  in  defiance  of  the  English  courts.     These  proceedings  were 
'V—  a  nullity  in  English  law,  and  from  a  nullity  there  can  be  no  appeal  on  the 
merits  of  a  case.  ^  See  pp.  85 — 88. 


I 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  243 

other  printing  which  I  gave  him  to  do,  by  April  or  May 
1864,  and  he  is  anxious  that  I  should  know  it,  that  I  may 
provide  more,  as  he  does  not  wish  to  leave  the  station  ! 
Bravo !  I  am  thinking  of  having  some  of  Callaway's 
productions  printed,  though  he  does  not  deserve  it." 

"To  Sir  Charles  Lyell. 

"  Kensington,  Septembe}- 13,  1863. 
"  I  have  had  a  very  pleasant  trip,  and  have  returned  strength- 
ened in  mind  and  body  after  my  intercourse  with  some  of 
the  best  critics  of  Europe.  It  would  be  amusing,  were  it 
not  humiliating,  to  see  what  view  they  take  of  the  state  of 
Biblical  criticism  in  England,  more  especially  among  those 
who  sit  on  the  episcopal  bench." 

"To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"Sussex  Place,  October  18,  1863. 
"Archdeacon  Denison,  I  Jiear\  has  just,  in  his  monthly  peri- 
odical The  CfiiircJi  and  State  Review,  accused  the  Bishop 
of  London  and  Professor  Stanley  of  rank  infidelity,  and 
says  that  the  former  is  not  fit  to  be  a  Bishop  !  So  I  am  in 
good  compan}'."  .  .  . 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Vhxc^.,  January  5,  1864. 

.  .  .  .  "  You  will  see  that  Stanley,  whom  the  Record  and 
Archdeacon  Denison  consider  a  more  dangerous  heretic 
than  myself,  is  to  be  the  new  Dean  of  Westminster,  not- 
withstanding Wordsworth's  furious  fulminations.  Behold 
the  consistency  of  these  men.  .  .  .  Dr.  Wordsworth,  the 
great  stickler  for  Church  order,  can  publish  this  libellous 
attack  upon  the  ecclesiastical  character  of  his  intended 
superior  ;  but  there  he  stops  short.  He  neither  charges  him 
with  his  offences  before  a  court  of  law,  nor  resigns  his  own 
office. 

"  What  would  be  thought  of  a  major  in  the  army,  who,  on 
hearing  that  some  one  was  appointed  to  be  colonel  of  his 

R  2 


244  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vi- 


regiment,  published  immediately  a  pamphlet  charging  him 
with  cowardly  or  disloyal  conduct  ?  Would  he  not  be 
bound  either  to  bring  those  charges  before  a  court-martial, 
or  to  quit  the  army  himself?  ... 
"  I  hear  from  Bleek  that  the  rumour  at  the  Cape  is  that  I  am 
to  be  suspended,  and  the  Bishop  to  go  up  to  Natal  and  act 
for  me.  Of  course,  I  cannot  prevent  his  doing  what  the 
patent  allows  him  to  do,  viz.  to  go  up  in  person,  and  while 
\;  present  personally,  assume  my  spiritual  powers.  But  as  to 
temporalities,  I  would  not  give  way  for  a  moment.  Do  not 
therefore,  as  I  am  sure  you  will  not,  part  with  any  of  the 
documents  in  your  possession  should  he  demand  them." 

Litigation  is  commonly  a  costly  process,  and  the  steps 
which  the  Bishop  was  compelled  to  take  in  order  to  test  the 
pretensions  of  the  so-called  judgement  of  the  Metropolitan 
of  Capetown  were  likely  to  involve  him  in  expenses  which 
he  could  not  meet  from  his  personal  resources.  His  friends 
accordingly  resolved  to  raise  a  Defence  Fund,  to  which 
reference  is  made  in  the  following  letter : — 

To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"  Sussex  Place,  February  2,  1864. 
"  The  first  donation  came  on  Saturday  from  a  gentleman  in 
Yorkshire,  a  layman,  quite  a  stranger  to  me,  i^  150,  with  a 
promise  of  '  five  times  as  much  or  more,  if  needed,'  and  an 
earnest  exhortation  to  maintain  my  ground  to  the  utmost, 
'  which  is  of  more  consequence  at  present  than  the  con- 
tinuation of  your  work.'  The  second  was  ^^50  from  a 
Beneficed  Clergyman  '  who  is  unwilling  to  give  his  name 
because  he  lives  in  a  focus  of  orthodoxy  ;  but  this  is  his 
first  subscription."  .... 

^^  February  5. 
"  I    copy   a    passage    from    a    letter    from   a    clergyman  this 
moment   received :  he   is  a    master   at   one   of  our   great  i 
schools.      '  I  have  spoken  of  the  Defence  Fund  to  several  i 
of  the  masters,  all  of  whom  intend  to  subscribe.     Whether 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  245 

they  will  give  their  names  or  not  depends  on  the  course 
adopted  by  the  masters  of  other  public  schools,  Rugby, 
Eton,  Marlborough,  &c.     I  have  talked   ...    to    the  head 

master  of ,  and  he  thinks  it  is  yet  uncertain  whether 

they  will  subscribe  anonymously  or  openly.  There  can  be 
no  question  that  the  latter  is  the  more  honourable  course, 
and  I  shall  use  whatever  influence  I  have  to  get  it 
adopted.' 
"  I  don't  think  that  he  will  succeed.  But  even  a  row  of 
'  anonymous '  clergy  will  tell  a  tale." 

To  THE  Rev.  T.  P.  Ferguson. 

"  Kensington,  February  26,  1864. 
"  I  am  quite  sure  that  your  thoughts  in  the  matter  of  the 
Defence  Fund  are  only  good  and  kind  towards  me,  and 
that  you  have  done  what  you  felt  to  be  right.  And  I  do 
not  wish  to  put  any  force  upon  your  own  sense  of  duty  in 
the  matter.  There  is  one  point,  however,  and  indeed  a 
principal  point,  in  your  letter,  on  which  in  justice  to  myself 
I  must  give  you  some  information.  You  speak  of  my 
'  clergy '  being  adverse  to  me,  and  of  my  inability  to  advise 
or  direct  them.  And  you  have  in  mind,  I  suppose,  a  pro- 
test from  eight  of  my  clergy,  addressed  to  me  about  a  twelve- 
month ago,  calling  upon  me  to  resign  my  see,  &c.  You 
must  remember  first  under  what  circumstances  that  docu- 
ment was  forwarded.  The  '  Bishops'  Manifesto  '  had  just 
reached  the  colony,  and  it  is  by  no  means  improbable  that 
the  protest  itself  was  suggested  by  a  letter  from  the 
chaplain  of  some  English  Bishop  to  Archdeacon  Grubb. 
It  was  composed  at  a  time  when  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's 
had  not  thrown  his  shield  around  me,  and  the  Convocation 
was  expected  to  grind  me  to  powder.  Above  all,  it  was 
written  before  the  Privy  Council  had,  by  its  recent  , 
judgement,  completely  legalised  my  present  position."         V" 

The  Bishop  goes  on  to  examine  the  list  of  names.      Two 
only   were   those   of   University    men,    one    of  these    being 


246  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vi 

Archdeacon  Grubb,  who,  knowing  that  the  Bishop  was  going 
to  England  to  publish  his  work  on  the  Pentateuch,  accepted 
the  office  of  commissary  during  his  absence  without  hesitation, 
and  discharged  it  until  he  was  frightened  by  the  uproar  from 
England.  His  signature  almost  of  necessity  carried  those  of 
the  rest,  and  of  these,  one,  Tonnesen,  publicly  expressed  his 
regret  for  having  signed  it. 

"  You  may  have  heard  that  I  have  received  a  warm  address 
of  sympathy  from  a  large  body  of  the  laity  of  Durban,  and 
that  a  counter  address,  which  was  prepared,  has  not  been 
sent,  because,  as  I  suppose,  it  was  not  sufficiently  signed. 
Thus  you  may  get  a  general  idea  of  the  state  of  things  in 
the  diocese,  and  as  Mr.  Shepstone  says  (previously  to  the 
results  of  my  last  volume,  with  Perowne's  admission  and 
Thirlwall's  judgement  of  Convocation,  and  previous  of 
course  to  the  recent  judgement)  it  only  needs  me  to  gain 
the  day  in  England  to  have  all  right  in  Natal  sufficiently 
for  all  practical  purposes." 

To  Miss  Cobbe. 

"  23  Sussex  Place,  February  29,  1864. 

"  I  heartily  thank  you  for  your  little  books.  ...  I  can 
say  no  more  than  that  your  words  speak  to  my  heart 
throughout,  and  that  I  truly  rejoice  in  the  work  which  you 
are  enabled  from  above  to  do,  and  which,  God  be  praised, 
you  are  doing.  What  my  own  future  course  may  be,  is 
still  uncertain,  though  I  think  I  see  before  me  the  path 
of  duty  becoming  more  clear  daily Should  the  de- 
cision as  to  jurisdiction  be  in  my  favour,  as  we  have  every 

^'^  reason  to  expect,  then  I  shall  be  in  a  position  to  return  to 
Africa   free  of  all   ecclesiastical   shackles,  except  the  vows 

made  at   my  consecration The  late  judgement  of 

the  Privy  Council  has  made  a  wonderful  gap  in  the  fence 
which  protected  the  old  superstition.  '  Take  away  our  hot 
plates  and  pincers,  and  where  are  we  ?  '  say  the  dogmatists. 

__   The  Saturday  Review  compares  the  said  '  fence,'  which  the 


I 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  247 

orthodox  deemed  a  stone  wall,  to  a  mere  paling  with  wide 
intervals  between  the  pales,  so  that  any  clergyman  may 
now  go  in  and  out  and  find  pasture  for  himself  and  his 
flock,  if  only  he  will  take  care  not  to  run  his  head  against 
one  of  the  pales, — add,  until  the  said  pale  has  become 
sufficiently  rotten  to  give  way  at  the  least  push." 

To  THE  Rev.  G.  W.  Cox. 

"  Kensington,  March  4,  1864. 
*'  Bishop  Cotterill  will,  I  think,  be  mistaken  as  to  my  clergy. 
The  best  of  them  has  just  written  to  say  that  he  'has  now 
been  reading  my  third  volume,  and  is  sorry  that  he  signed 
the  protest.'  Another  writes  to  me  month  after  month  in 
the  most  dutiful  manner,  and  a  third  refused  to  sign  any- 
thing, and  sent  his  duty  to  me.  Of  course  I  shall  have 
a  fight  d  toiitrance  with  Dean  Green,  backed  by  Bishop 
Gray  and  Archdeacon  Fearne.  But  they  can  do  nothing. 
....  You  remember  that  Denison  intimated  some  eight 
months  ago  his  willingness  to  '  bury '  me  with  the  due 
honours  of  the  Church  Service,  as  I  was  not  excommuni- 
cated. He  seems  anxious  to  hurry  the  ceremony,  as  he 
writes  upon  '  the  late  Bishop  of  Natal '  though,  even  on  his 
own  principle,  I  cannot  be  '  dead '  ecclesiastically  till  the 
Cape  mail  leaves  England  to-morrow  evening,  which  might 
take  my  retractation,  and  he  cannot  be  sure  that  it  won't  go 
out  and  be  presented  to  Bishop  Gray  on  April  17." 

To  THE  Rev.  T.  P.  Ferguson. 

"  March  4,  1 864. 

"  Thanks  for  your  note  and  for  all  your  love. 

"  But  I  do  not  think  that  your  comparison  of  a  Bishop  with  a 
General  at  all  holds  good. 

"  In  the  first  place,  if  a  commanding  officer  becomes  unpopular 

with  his  officers, — e.g.  Colonel  C ,  it  may  be  because  his 

officers  are  bad  ;  and  the  remedy  may  be  to  remove  them  to 
other  regiments,  as  in  his  case  has,  I  believe,  been  done. 
The  soldiers,  you  remember,  liked  him  ;  and  the  laity  have 


248  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

addressed  me.  But  at  all  events,  if  the  Colonel  is  removed, 
he  is  allowed  to  retire  on  half-pay,  or  sell  out.  What  am  I 
to  do  ?  ...  .  But  this  after  all  is  only  a  secondary  question. 
Did  St.  Paul  retire  from  the  oversight  of  the  Galatians, 
when  they  '  so  soon  removed  from  him  to  another  gospel '  ? 
Or  did  he  think  it  necessary  to  consider  whether  the  clergy 
of  the  Galatian  churches,  who  preached  that  other  gospel, 
would  like  his  supervision  or  not  ?  '  Do  I  seek  to  please 
men  .''  For,  if  I  yet  pleased  men,  I  should  not  be  the 
servant  of  Christ.' 
"  As  soon  as  the  '  law '  deposes  me,  of  course,  my  office  is 
at  an  end,  and  I  must  bear  the  consequences  of  speaking 
what  I  believe  to  be  the  truth.  But  till  then,  it  seems  to 
me  to  be  my  duty  to  proclaim  the  truth,  as  I  see  it,  though 
all  the  clergy  and  laity  of  England  and  Natal  were  banded 
against  me,  and  though  all  possible  annoyance  and  insult 
might  be  my  lot  for  so  doing ;  unless,  indeed,  I  have  lost  all 
faith  in  the  power  of  Truth  to  prevail  at  last  over  all  oppo- 
sition." 

To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

'■'■March  29,  1864. 

.  .  .  .  "  First  let  me  quiet  your  anxieties  by  saying  that  all  is 
going  well  with  us  at  present,  and  as  well  as  we  could  pos- 
sibly desire,  and  that  I  am  now  seriously  expecting  that  we 
shall  sail  for  Natal  in  the  fall  of  this  year. 

"The  Privy  Council  judgement  [on  the  Essays  and Reviezvs 
case]  has  been  delivered,  and  is  of  infinite  importance.  On 
every  point  appealed  against  the  judgement  of  the  court 
below  has  been  reversed.  .  .  .  The  decision  goes  very  far 
beyond  what  we  had  any  of  us  anticipated  or  hoped  for,  in 

^,  all  essential  points.  ...  I  need  not  say  that  it  sweeps  awa}- 
at  a  stroke  the  whole  farrago  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown's 
judgement.  On  the  very  point  of 'endless  punishment,'  on 
which  the  three  Cape  Bishops  were  so  positive,  the  three 
English  Bishops  are  agreed  in  the  very  opposite  direction. 
And  on  every  single  point  of  the  nine  (on  which  they  have 
condemned  me)  which  has  been   under  discussion  in   the 


1863-65-         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  249 

English  courts,  either  in  the  Gorham  judgement,  or  Lush- 
ington's,  or  this  last  of  the  Privy  Council,  /  am  justified,  and 
they  are  condemned." 

To  The  same. 

"  Sussex  Place,  April  4,  1864. 
"  The  greatest  news  of  the  last  month  is  the  '  Declaration  ' 
pushed  forwards  with  the  utmost  vigour  by  the  joint  efforts 
of  the  Tractarian  and  Recordite  parties.  In  the  face  of 
the  judgement  of  the  Privy  Council,  between  9,000  and 
10,000  clergy  have  declared  that  the  Church  of  England 
holds  that  every  part  of  the  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God, 
and  that  the  punishments  of  the  other  world  are  everlast- 
ing. Happily,  only  about  Jialf  of  the  English  clergy  have 
been  got  to  sign  it ;  and  though,  of  course,  a  great  many  of 
the  non-declarants  may  have  withheld  their  names  for 
various  reasons,  and  not  because  they  differ  from  the  decla- 
ration itself,  yet  it  is  plain,  I  think,  that  the  liberal  party  in 
the  clergy  is  considerably  stronger  than  we  ourselves  had 
imagined,  and  it  will,  I  doubt  not,  increase  daily." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place, /««^  6,  1864. 
.  .  .  "We  have  not  yet  got  the  list  of  Dr.  Pusey  and  his 
11,000  virgins.  But  the  Record  says  that  almost  all  the 
Irish  clergy  have  signed  the  declaration.  If  so,  it  is 
unfortunate  for  its  importance,  as  the  Irish  Church  stands 
very  low  in  public  estimation  in  England.  Perhaps  its 
clergy  may  be  5,000  ;  take  these  away,  and  then  deduct  the 
curates  under  the  screw  from  their  rectors,  the  deacons, 
and  the  literates,  and  how  many  will  remain  of  the  genuine, 
intelligent,  English  clergy  ?  " 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place,////^  3,  1864. 
"  It  appears  from  the  Bishop  of  London's  statement  in  Con- 
vocation that  the  whole  number  of  clergy  in  England  and 


250  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

Ireland  is  24,805,  of  which  10,906,  not  one-half,  have  signed 
the  famous  declaration.  The  signers  among  the  English 
clergy  were  only  9,675,  out  of  22,509  ;  and  8  only  of  the 
30  Deans,  9  out  of  40  Oxford  Professors,  and  not  one  of 
the  29  Cambridge  Professors,  have  signed  it.  .  .  . 

"  I  have  now  Professor  Kuenen  staying  with  me  for  a  week, 
and  of  course  we  are  discussing  the  Pentateuch  at  every 
available  moment.  Though  he  differs  in  detail  from  some 
of  my  views,  I  see  no  reason  as  yet  to  modify  any  of  them. 

"■  I  came  out  of  the  Athenaeum  the  other  day,  and  saw  at  the 
door  my  old  college  friend,  Bishop  Ellicott,  of  Gloucester 
and  Bristol,  with  whom  we  had  all  stayed  a  night  at  his 
deanery  in  Exeter,  shortly  after  landing,  upon  which  occa- 
sion I  discussed  with  him  all  the  principal  parts  of  my 
work  on  the  Pentateuch.  Though  not  agreeing  with  all  my 
views,  yet  he  made  no  serious  objection  to  them.  But  as 
soon  as  he  got  upon  the  bench,  he  issued  a  bull  of  inhibi- 
tion as  long  and  unmeaning  as  any  of  them.  There  he  now 
was  (on  horseback)  at  the  door  of  the  Athenaeum.  ,  .  .  On 
seeing  me  he  nodded,  and  I  went  up  and  shook  hands  with 
him,  upon  which  he  said,  '  Upon  my  word  !  you  don't  seem 
much  the  worse  for  all  the  storms  and  tempests  that  have 
gone  over  you  ! '  So  there  you  have  the  last  report  of  my 
health  at  this  moment." 

To  Miss  F.  P.  Cobbe. 

"  23  Sussex  Place,  May  12,  1864. 
"  Your  refreshing  note  reached  me  yesterday,  and  came  like  a 
single  drop  to  sweeten  a  whole  cup  full  of  bitterness,  which 
I  found  awaiting  me,  as   the  result  of  the  post,  during   a 

two  days'  absence You  wish  to  know  what 

I  am  doing.  I  post  the  '  Letter  to  the  Laity,'  which  will 
give  you  some  idea  of  the  present  state  of  things.  ...  I 
quite  feel  that  if  life  and  strength  are  spared,  my  work  must 
be  done  eventually  in  England,  and  your  letter  is  not  the 
only  one  which  has  put  before  me  strongly  my  duty  to 
remain  here.     But  I  think  that  I  must  return  for  a  time  at 


( 


1 863-65.         IV0/?K  IN  ENGLA  ND—  THE  BA  TTLE.  2 5 1 

all  events,  if  only  to  set  things  in  order,  and  take  a  final 
leave  of  my  friends  and  my  poor  native  flock.  Whatever 
I  may  have  to  write,  as  I  pursue  the  work  which  God  in 
His  Providence  has  laid  upon  me,  I  have  as  yet  written 
nothing  which  deserves  the  treatment  which  I  have  received 
at  the  hands  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown.  And  I  think  that 
the  cause  of  truth  itself  requires  that  I  should  assert  this 
by  maintaining  my  ground  in  the  face  of  his  excommuni- 
cations. If  he  had  waited  quietly  for  the  decision  of  the 
authorities  at  home — not  shrinking  from  what  he  felt  to  be 
his  own  duty  in  the  matter,  but  yet  acting  openly,  fairly, 
and  temperately,  abiding  calmly  the  result  of  my  appeal, 
and  prepared  to  submit  himself  to  the  judgement  of  the 
Privy  Council  if  adverse  to  himself,  as  well  as  to  carry  out 
his  '  sentence '  if  confirmed — I  might  have  seen  it  best  to 
retire  at  once  from  the  conflict,  as  soon  as  the  appeal  was 
decided,  though  it  would  have  cost  me  a  sore  pang  to  give 
up  thus  my  work  in  Natal.  But  now,  after  the  violent 
course  which  Bishop  Gray  has  taken  and  still  intends  to 
pursue,  ...  I  feel  bound  to  go  out,  if  I  go  alone,  and 
stand  my  ground  before  him — supposing  that  the  Privy 
Council  gives  a  decision  in  my  favour.  Last  night  I  had 
an  intimation  from  the  Colonial  Secretary  to  the  effect 
that  my  case  is  to  go  before  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the 
Privy  Council — but  '  in  its  most  general  form,'  i.e.,  I  suppose, 
they  will  only  discuss  the  question  of  jurisdiction.  My 
course  will  be  determined  pretty  nearly  by  the  form  which 
the  decision  takes.  If  it  should  be  adverse  to  me,  on  the 
score  of  jurisdiction,  .  .  .  then  I  should  perhaps  appeal 
to  the  Court  of  Arches  or  Privy  Council  on  the  question  of 
'  merits,'  if  such  appeal  is  allowed  ;  and  if  this  appeal  were 
decided  for  me,  I  should  probably  then  go  out  for  two  or 
three  years — long  enough  to  assert  my  rights,  and  to  com- 
plete my  work  on  the  Pentateuch.  The  decision  of  the 
Privy  Council  may,  however,  be  given  in  such  a  form  as  to 
pjU  me  itito  the  hands  of  the  Bishop,  in  ^^'hich  case  I  should 
certainly  not  go  out  again,  or  only  for  a  few  months,  just  to 
wind  up  my  affairs.     But  whenever   I   do  return  finally  to 


252  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

England,  what  am  I  to  do  ?  Indeed  I  know  not ;  and  I 
can  only  trust  that  some  work  will  be  found,  by  which  I 
may  earn  a  living  for  my  family.  Criticism  alone  will  not 
do  this :  and  my  books  will  exclude  me  from  almost  every 
situation  which  I  might  feel  myself  competent  to  fill.  What 
'  respectable  '  person  could  be  expected  to  vote  for  the  ex- 
Bishop,  heretic,  infidel,  and  renegade  .-•  Or,  if  some  few  had 
the  courage  to  do  so,  how  many  would  not  ?  This  would 
be  nothing  if  one  were  beginning  life,  or  were  alone  in  the 
world  ;  but,  as  things  are,  I  must  confess  the  worldly  pros- 
pect in  the  future  is  very  blank  and  cheerless  ;  nor  do  I  at 
present  see  my  way  at  all  through  the  gloom.  I  do  not 
wish  to  leave  the  National  Church  and  become  a  sectarian. 
Yet  within  the  Church,  when  I  shall  have  once  resigned  my 
see,  I  know  of  no  post  that  I  could  be  allowed  to  fill.  Well, 
time  will  show  what  is  to  be  done,  and  God's  good  Providence 
is  over  all. 
"  I  am  not  writing  at  present,  though  a  great  part  of  my  fifth 
volume  is  written.  But  I  have  been  reading  a  number  of 
German  works,  full  of  learning  and  information,  though 
utterly  unknown  to  English  divines.  The  more  I  study  the 
subject,  the  less  reason  I  see  for  withdrawing  my  foot  from 
any  of  the  positions  which  I  have  taken  in  my  different 
volumes.  In  particular,  as  to  the  later  origin  of  the  name 
Jehovah,  I  had  no  idea  what  very  strong  confirmation  of 
this  opinion  is  given  by  the  records  of  the  Phoenician  religion. 
Many  English  readers  will  be  astonished,  I  think,  when 
they  have  the   facts  to  which   I    refer  laid  plainly  before 

them I  am  well  pleased  that  my  books  are  on 

the  bookshelves  of  your  host.  I  wish  that  they  were  more 
worthy  of  the  perusal  of  a  learned  foreigner.  But  things 
which  are  new  and  strange  to  us  in  England  have  been 
long  familiar  to  German  scholars.  You  probably  see  the 
Victoria  Magazine,  where,  in  this  month's  number,  the 
editor  takes  you  to  task  for  your  judgement  of  Mr.  Maurice. 
Not  a  word  of  sympathy  has  reached  me  from  that  quarter 
since  you  left  England.  Father  Newman  is  now  giving  a 
most  interesting  account  of  the  Tractarian  movement  in  a 


1 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND -THE  BATTLE.  253 

series  of  pamphlets  which  he  calls  an  'Apology'  for  his 
life. 
"  Yesterday  the  famous  declaration  was  presented  ;  but  only 
four  Bishops  with  the  Archbishops  were  present  at  its 
reception,  viz.  Bangor,  St.  Asaph,  Gloucester,  and  Wor- 
cester. It  has  been  signed  by  about  half  the  clergy  ;  and 
it  will  be  curious  to  know  by  what  class  of  the  clergy  it  has 
been  chiefly  signed." 

To  THE  Rev.  A.  W.  L.  Rivett. 

"  Kensington, /«;/!?  6,  1864. 

*'  I  am  afraid  that  you  and  others  of  the  clergy  will  have  been 
much  perplexed  by  the  proceedings  of  the  Bishop  of  Cape- 
town, and  I  am  sorry  on  all  accounts  that  he  did  not  wait 
quietly  for  the  legal  decision  of  the  questions  at  issue.  You 
will  see  by  the  Times  of  May  25  that  I  dined  as  Bishop 
of  Natal  with  the  Colonial  Ministers  on  Her  Majesty's 
birthday — a  fact  which  shows  that  the  Government  at 
home  does  not  recognise  the  validity  of  the  sentence  of 
deposition,  according  to  which  I  ceased  to  be  Bishop  of 
Natal  on  April  16.  My  petition  is  to  come  before  the 
Privy  Council  at  its  next  meeting,  either  this  week  or  next, 
and  then  it  will  be  decided  what  course  the  affair  is  likely 
to  take.  If  the  matter  is  referred  to  the  Judicial  Committee, 
time  must  then  be  allowed  for  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  to 
appear  by  his  counsel,  and  I  shall  not  be  able  to  leave 
England  till  the  end  of  the  year.  But  the  Privy  Council 
may  decide  at  once,  or  may  decline  to  interfere  at  this 
stage  ;  and  in  either  of  these  cases  I  shall  hope  to  sail  for 
Natal  as  soon  as  I  can  complete  my  preparations  for  the 
voyage. 

"  I  am  very  glad  to  find  that  your  health  bears  up  under  the 
heavy  work  you  have  had,  and  also  that  you  have  paid  off 
the  debt  upon  the  church.  It  does  you  great  credit  to  have 
managed  this  work  so  well. 

"  You  will  sec  from  the  above  that  by  the  next  mail  I  hope  to 
be  able  to  speak  more  definitely  of  my  plans.  The  delays 
of  the  law  are  tedious :  still  it  is  better  to  wait  quietly  and 


2  54  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

patiently,  until  my  ground  is  made  sure  for  me  by  an 
authoritative  legal  decision,  if  that  can  be  obtained,  than 
to  take  rash  and  hasty  steps  such  as  those  which  the 
Metropolitan  appears  to  be  taking. 
"  I  should  strongly  advise  you  and  others  of  the  clerg}^,  who 
may  be  perplexed  between  the  injunctions  of  the  Bishop  of 
Capetown  not  to  obey  me  as  Bishop,  and  your  sense  of  duty 
to  the  oath  which  you  have  taken  of  obedience  to  your 
Bishop,  who  is  still  recognised  as  such  by  the  Queen's 
Government,  and  by  the  law  of  the  land,  to  write  person- 
ally to  Mr.  Hawkins,  Secretary  of  the  S.P.G.,  and  put  the 
case  before  him,  and  ask  his  advice  and  direction  as  to 
what  the  Society  wishes  you  to  do  under  the  circumstances, 
seeing  that,  by  the  instructions  to  their  missionaries,  they 
expressly  require  you  to  be  subject  to  your  Bishop.  But 
do  not  write  before  the  September  mail,  as  the  Committee 
does  not  meet  till  October,  and  therefore  your  letter,  if 
arriving  sooner,  might  be  lost  sight  of." 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  do  more  than  notice  in  passing 
the  incidents  which  took  place  at  Claybrook  in  September 
1864.  It  was  the  old  story.  The  incumbent  had  invited  the 
Bishop  to  preach  for  his  village  school ;  and  the  Bishop  of 
the  diocese  anticipated  him  by  an  inhibition.  Instead  of 
preaching,  the  Bishop  published  his  sermon  (to  which  it 
would  be  hard  indeed  for  any  one  to  offer  any  objections),  and 
addressed  the  people  later  in  the  day  in  the  school-room, 
until  the  pressure  of  the  crowd  made  it  needful  to  end  his 
speech  in  the  open  air.  It  was  but  a  few  wrecks  before  these 
occurrences  that  Mr.  Briarly,  a  Yorkshire  clergyman,  addressed 
the  Archbishop  of  York  with  reference  to  a  book  intitled 
The  Mosaic  Origin  of  the  Pentateuch  considered  in  connexion 
zvith  Parts  II.  and  III.  of  Bishop  Colensds  "  Critical  Examination 
of  the  Pentateuch."  This  w^ork  was  announced  as  "By  a  Layman,'^ 
but  it  was  dedicated  "  by  permission  "  to  the  Archbishop  ;  and 
although    in   a  work   so   dedicated   the  person  receiving  the 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  255 

dedication  cannot  fairly  be  considered  responsible  for  minute 
and  subordinate  details,  still  it  would  follow  that  he  approved 
its  main  arguments  and  conclusions.  The  Archbishop  may- 
have  done  more  :  he  must,  if  he  had  read  the  book,  at  least 
have  done  this.  But  the  "  Layman  "  in  this  book  had  ex- 
pressed himself  thus  : — 

"  It  must  be  confessed  that  the  results  we  have  thus  arrived  at 
do  differ  very  materially  from  the  views  commonly  held. 
The  pre-Mosaic  origin  of  large  portions  of  Genesis  ;  the 
existence  of  two  records  of  the  Exodus,  one,  certainly, 
therefore,  non-Mosaic  ;  the  incorporation  of  narratives  of 
foreign  origin ;  the  numerous  additions  and  occasional 
alterations  made  by  a  later  writer  after  the  Conquest, 
— these  are  facts  v^ery  strangely  at  variance  with  the 
notions  generally  entertained.  Facts  they  are,  however — 
not  mere  theoretic  fancies  or  unfounded  assumptions  ;  and 
in  accordance  with  them  we  must  frame  our  final  view  of 
the  true  origin  of  the  Pentateuch.  Much  of  it  is  certainly 
non-Mosaic,  some  earlier,  some  contemporary,  some  later 
than  Moses.  Many  portions  of  the  Pentateuch  could  not 
have  proceeded  from  his  pen,  or  even  have  been  written 
under  his  direction." 

A  hundred  other  admissions  of  a  similar  kind  might  be 
cited  ;  but  one  is  as  valuable  as  a  multitude.  Any  one  of 
them  makes  the  whole  criticism  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  there- 
fore of  all  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  Scriptures,  an  open 
question.  In  the  words  of  the  "  Layman,"  the  result  to  be 
aimed  at  is  a  "  final  view,"  which  may  be  right  or  which  may 
be  wrong  ;  but  every  one  of  the  admissions  swept  utterly  away 
traditional  theories  for  disputing  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
had  been  covered  with  the  foulest  abuse  by  clergymen  and 
others  who  are  usually  supposed  to  be  gentlemen.  If  twenty 
'  '!•  thirty  chapters  of  the  Pentateuch  are  non-]\Tosaic,  any 
number  more  may  be  in  the  same  predicament.  If  there  be 
mis-statements,  or  errors  of  any  kind,  in  two  or  three  passages 


256  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vl 

there  may  be  any  number,  serious  or  slight,  in  others  also. 
The  "  Layman  "  beyond  doubt  was  justified  in  avowing  these 
conclusions  :  he  was  bound  to  do  so.  But  the  Archbishop 
was  not  a  whit  less  bound  to  avow  the  sanction  for  these 
conclusions  implied  in  the  fact  of  the  dedication.  Yet  how 
did  the  Archbishop  act  ?  Mr.  Briarly  put  together  many  of 
these  admissions,  and  then  wrote  to  Archbishop  Thomson, 
asking  him  whether  he  allowed  these  statements  to  go  forth 
with  the  authority  of  his  name,  and  whether  he  felt  the 
importance  of  these  admissions  in  their  bearing  on  the  present 
controversy.  To  this  letter  the  Archbishop  returned  no 
answer,  and  a  month  later  Mr.  Briarly  printed  his  letter  with 
the  "  Layman's "  admissions,  and  circulated  it  amongst 
"  members  of  the  United  Church  of  England  and  Ireland," 
with  the  remark  that  he  could  only  suppose  that  the 
Archbishop  took  on  himself  the  responsibility  of  these 
statements, 

"  and  that  we  must  now  make  up  our  minds  to  admit  the 
'  composite  character '  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  the  '  non- 
Mosaic  '  origin  of  considerable  portions  of  it,  for  attempting 
to  demonstrate  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal  has  incurred  so 
much,  and,  as  it  appears,  so  much  undeserved  obloquy." 

The  subsequent  withdrawal  of  the  dedication  cannot  affect 
the  fact  of  its  having  appeared  with  the  first  editions.  The 
Archbishop  may  not  have  read  the  book  ;  but  in  this  case 
must  not  the  conclusion  be  that  he  regarded  the  subject  as 
one  of  no  great  consequence  } 


To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"  Sussex  Place,  September  2,  1864. 

.  "  I  am  going  to  the  British  Association  at  Bath  on  the 
1 3th  inst." 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  257 

To   THE   SAME. 

"■October  1,  1864. 
.  .  "  From  Claybrook  [where  Dr.  Jeune,  Bishop  of  Peter- 
borough, had  the  impertinence  to  send  him  a  lawyer  bearing 
an  inhibition]  I  went  straight  to  Bath  .  .  .  My  reception,  as 
you  will  see,  in  this  thoroughly  evangelical  city,  was  remark- 
able. But  particularly  so  was  the  fact  of  the  Dean  of 
Hereford  coming  bravely  forward  on  the  platform  in  the 
theatre,  in  sight  of  the  whole  vast  assembly,  to  shake  me 
cordially  by  the  hand.  .  .  .  When  Sir  Charles  Lyell  at  one 
point  of  his  address  spoke  of  our  being  unable  to  get  the 
chill  of  traditionary  beliefs  out  of  our  bones,  he  was  stopped 
for  some  minutes  by  repeated  peals  of  applause  ;  and  so  was 
I,  when  I  got  up  to  propose  Livingstone's  health  -after  the 
dinner.  This  was  not  planned  beforehand,  but  had  only 
been  thought  of  a  minute  or  two  before.  ...  I  know  that 
you  will  like  to  hear  all  these  little  details,  and  won't  think 
me  egotistical  in  relating  them,  for  they  show  how  the  wind 
is  blowing  here  in  England." 

It  was,  indeed,  only  to  inform  his  friend  that  he  noticed 
these  details  at  all.  What  occurred  at  Bath  and  at  Harrow 
was  known  generally,  and  was  the  subject  of  common  conver- 
sation ;  but  these  incidents  had  their  significance  as  serving  to 
show  what  impression  had  been  produced  by  the  work  thus 
far  done,  and  his  distant  friends  might,  therefore,  reasonably 
expect  to  hear  about  them  from  himself. 

To  John  Merrifield,  Esq. 

"Kensington,  October  18,  1864. 
"  I  have  in  the  press  a  complete  criticism  of  the  Pentateuch  and 
Book  of  Joshua,  a  translation  by  me  from  the  Dutch  of 
Professor  Kuenen,  with  notes  of  my  own  showing  the  points 
of  agreement  with  my  criticisms  as  far  as  published,  and 
the  unimportant  particulars  in  which  I  differ  from  him.  It 
is  a  masterly  work,  this  of  Kuenen,  and  may  be,  I  hope,  a 
VOL.  I.  S 


258  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

text-book  for  the  younger  clergy ;  and  at  any  rate  it  will 
serve  as  a  stop-gap  until  I  can  complete  the  whole  of  my 
own  work.  It  would  not  be  prudent  in  me  perhaps,  nor 
indeed,  would  it  be  possible,  to  bring  out  the  rest  of  my 
own  book,  though  I  have  a  deal  of  it  in  MS.  I  shall  do  my 
best  to  let  the  Privy  Council  come  to  their  decision,  without 
rousing  any  more  hostility  than  is  necessary  until  that 
decision  is  given. 
"  As  to  my  future  course,  much  will  depend  on  the  nature  of 
that  decision.  But  I  must  run  down  some  day  to  Brighton 
and  have  a  talk  with  you,  the  only  old  friend  whom  I  can 
consult  about  this  matter." 

To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"  23  Sussex  Place,  December  9,  1864. 
"  Bishop  Gray  puts  into  print  a  statement  of  the  Dean  [Green] 
that  he  believed  I  had  received  i^SOO  from  S.P.C.K.  for  a 
grammar  school  at  Maritzburg,  the  fact  being  that  I  had 
only  asked  for  such  a  grant,  and  for  the  present  the  Society 
declined  to  make  it,  the  colony  not  being  sufficiently  ad- 
vanced. But  there  it  stands,  insinuating  that  I  have  had 
the  money  and  misapplied  it.  Now  the  Bishop  might  have 
had  the  fairness  and  courtesy  to  write  and  ask  me  first 
privately  to  give  an  account  of  this  sum,  and  the  other 
sums  which  I  have  received,  before  he  rushed  into  print  in 
this  way." 

To   THE   SAME.  ' 

"Sussex  VhXC^,  January  6,  1865. 
.  .  .  .  "  My  case  has  been  duly  heard,  and  took  up  four  days 

of  the  judges'  time It  is  universally  recognised  by 

the  English  press  that  some  of  the   gravest  constitutional 

4v  questions  are  raised  by  this  case It  is  doubtful,  at 

present,  in  what  form  the  decision  will  be  given, — whether 
they  will  say  that  Bishop  Gray  has  no  jurisdiction,  ...  or, 
which  seems  more  probable,  will  allow  his  jurisdiction,  but 
with  an  appeal  to  the  Crown.     This  is  all  that  we  really 


1863-65.  WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  259 

contend  for,  and  this  Sir  Hugh  Cairns  has  allowed  in 
plain  words,  for  which  I  fancy  Bishop  Gray  will  not  thank 
him." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place,  March  9,  1S65, 
.  ..."  I   breakfasted  a  few  days   ago  with   Mr.   Chichester 

Fortescue,  Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies We  got 

upon  the  subject  of  the  education  of  the  natives,  and  I 
started  the  idea  of  devoting  the  ^5,000  in  Natal  to  the 
establishment  of  Government  schools  with  all  the  great 
tribes,  having  heard  from  Mr.  Scott  that  he  was  himself 
inclined  to  take  steps  in  this  direction.  Mr.  Fortescue 
listened  with  the  deepest  interest,  and  I  feel  sure  that,  as 
far  as  he  is  concerned,  the  idea  will  not  be  allowed  to  drop. 
I  told  him  that  I  am  bound  to  fight  out  the  ecclesiastical 
question  ;  but  when  I  have  gained  the  victory,  as  com- 
pletely as  the  case  will  allow,  I  would  gladly  exchange  the 
Bishop's  throne  for  the  chair  of  Inspector  of  Native  Educa- 
tion in  Natal,  if  they  could  allow  me  enough  to  live  upon. 
....  Mr.  Fortescue  took  the  matter  in  entirely,  and  I  am 
persuaded  that,  if  it  rested  with  him  alone,  it  would  be  done. 
....  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  a  great  deal  might  be 
done  for  the  improvement  of  the  natives  b}'  a  system  of 
Government  schools,  without  dogmatic  teaching,  though,  of 
course,  elementary  religious  truth  would  not  be  excluded 
from  them.  And  I  need  hardly  say  that  to  be  engaged  in 
such  work  would  be  the  realisation  of  my  most  cherished 
wishes  in  going  to  Natal  at  all  in  the  first  instance." 

Towards  the  close  of  the  }'ear  1864,  the  pretensions  of  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown  came  before  the  Sovereign  in  Council. 
In  dealing  with  the  questions  submitted  to  it,  the  Judicial 
Committee  laid  down  certain  positions  which  still  remain 
law.  But  a  tribunal  which  lays  down  principles  may  be  mis- 
taken as  to  the  circumstances  of  the  case  to  which  those 
principles  are  to  be  applied.      It  ma)'  be  taken  as  certain 

"  that  in  a  colony  having  legislative  institutions  there  was  no 

S  2 


26o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

power  in  the  Crown  by  virtue  of  its  prerogative  (independent 
of  statute)  to  establish  a  metropoHtan  see  or  province,  or  to 
create  an  ecclesiastical  corporation  whose  status,  rights,  and 
authority  the  colony  will  be  required  to  recognise  ; " 

also 

"  that  there  was  no  consensual  jurisdiction,  for  it  was  not 
competent  for  the  one  Bishop  to  give  or  the  other  to  exercise 
any  such  jurisdiction." 

The  first  consequence  of  this  ruling  would  be,  as  the  decision 
of  the  Judicial  Committee,  delivered  March  20,  1865,  declared 
it  to  be, 

"  that  the  proceedings  taken  by  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  and 
the  judgement  and  sentence  pronounced  by  him  against  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  are  null  and  void  in  law." 

There  was,  and  there  is,  no  question  that  at  the  time  when 
the  metropolitical  diocese  of  Capetown  was  created,  the 
colon}'  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  possessed  "  legislative 
institutions."  But  the  Judicial  Committee  made  one  mistake 
as  to  fact,  or  perhaps  two  mistakes.  They  treated  the  colon}' 
of  Natal  as  an  integral  part  of  the  colony  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  or  looked  on  both  as  possessed  of  the  same  "  legislative 
institutions."  This  was  not  the  case.  At  the  time  when  the 
bishopric  of  Natal  was  created,  and  the  title  of  Metropolitan 
was  conferred  on  the  Bishop  of  the  newly  formed  diocese  of 
Capetown,  Natal  was,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  Crown 
colon}\^  The  Crown,  therefore,  had  full  power  to  create  an 
ecclesiastical  corporation  in  that  colon}',  "  whose  status,  rights, 
and  authority  the  colony  would  be  required  to  recognise  ; " 
but  without  an  Act  of  the  legislature  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  it  had  not  the  power  of  conferring  Metropolitan  or 
any  other  powers  on  the  Bishop  of  the  re-made  diocese  of 
Capetown. 

Mn  a  measure  it  is  so  still 


1S63-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  261 


Legally,  then,  the  proceedings  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
and  his  judgement  were  worthless.  Spiritually,  it  was  con- 
tended by  himself,  and  by  his  supporters,  that  they  were  valid ; 
and  the  inference  insisted  on  was  that,  if  he  had  no  jurisdiction, 
and  if  his  judgement  was  in  law  a  nullit}',  no  appeal  could  lie 
to  the  Queen  in  Council.  This  plea  was  summarily  set  aside 
by  the  Judicial  Committee,  which  held 

"  that  under  25  Hen.  VIII.,  c.  19,  an  appeal  would  lie." 

But  it  was  the  fault  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  and  his 
adherents  that  the  appeal  was  made  simply  against  his  exer- 
cise of  jurisdiction.  It  was  impossible  to  carry  an  appeal  to 
the  Crown  on  the  merits  of  the  case,  unless  both  parties  were 
agreed  that  it  should  be  so  carried.  The  coercive  jurisdiction 
might  be  appealed  against,  but  not  the  detailed  charges  with 
reference  to  which  that  professed  or  pretended  jurisdiction 
had  been  exercised.  Under  no  circumstances,  however,  would 
the  Bishop  of  Capetown  hear  of  an  appeal  to  what  he  spoke 
of  as  a  purely  secular  tribunal.  The  way  to  an  examination 
of  the  case  on  its  merits  was  absolutely  barred.  Neither  the 
Judicial  Committee  nor  any  other  court  could  waste  its  time 
in  debating  the  details  of  charges  brought  by  a  so-called 
tribunal  which  was  asserted  to  have  no  legal  existence.  But 
if  the  charges  had  been  brought  honestly  and  in  good  faith, 
as  they  might  have  been  brought,  as  against  a  Bishop  or  an 
incumbent  in  England,  the  right  of  appeal  to  the  Crown  being 
admitted,  then  the  nullity  of  the  metropolitical  court,  and  the 
legal  invalidity  of  its  sentence,  would  have  been  no  bar  to  a 
settlement  of  the  case  on  its  merits.  The  appeal  and  the 
scrutiny  would  have  followed  in  due  course,  and  the  scan- 
dalous divisions  introduced  by  the  setting  up  of  the  so-called 
Church  of  South  Africa,  would  all  have  been  avoided.  To 
get  rid  of  what  he  called  the  yoke  of  a  secular  court,  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown   set  up  a  schismatical   body  ;    and  its 


262  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

schism  is  none  the  less  a  fact  because  it  has  continued  to 
exist  for  more  than  twenty  years. 

It  becomes,  therefore,  unnecessary  to  examine  the  language 
of  the  letters  patent  creating  the  new  diocese  of  Capetown  in 
December  1853.  But  even  if  the  validity  of  these  letters  were 
conceded,  there  can  still  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  meaning  of 
the  clause  which  declares  that,  if  any  party  shall  conceive 
himself  aggrieved  by  any  judgement,  decree,  or  sentence  of 
the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  it  shall  be  lawful  for  him  to  appeal 
to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Bishop  Gray,  as  of  favour, 
condescended  to  allow  in  this  particular  instance  an  appeal 
to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  in  person.  The  appeal 
indicated  in  the  letters  patent  was  to  the  Archbishop  in  his 
judicial  capacity,  from  whom  an  appeal  would  of  necessity  lie 
to  the  Crown. 

The  attempt  made  by  Bishop  Gray  to  draw  a  distinction 
between  ecclesiastical  and  spiritual  authority  was  summarily 
disallowed.     It  was  determined  that 

"  pastoral  or  spiritual  authority  may  be  incidental  to  the  office 
of  Bishop  ;    but  all  jurisdiction  in  the  Church,  where  it  can 

-—be  lawfully  conferred,  must  proceed  from  the  Crown,  and 
be  exercised  as  the  law  directs  ;  and  suspension  or  privation 
of  office  are  matters  of  coercive  legal  jurisdiction,  and  not 
of  mere  spiritual  authority." 

The  plea  of  consensual  jurisdiction  might  seem  to  carry 
greater  weight.  With  this  plea  the  Judicial  Committee  dealt 
as  follows : — 

"  There  is  nothing  on  which  such  an  argument  can  be 
attempted  to  be  put,  unless  it  be  the  oath  of  canonical 
obedience  taken  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal  to  Dr.  Gray  as 
Metropolitan. 

"  The  argument  must  be  that,  both  parties  being  aware  that 
the    Bishop    of    Capetown    has    no    jurisdiction    or    legal 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  263 

authority  as  Metropolitan,  the  appellant  agreed  to  give  it 
to  him  by  voluntary  submission.  But,  even  if  the  parties 
intended  to  enter  into  any  such  agreement  (of  which,  how- 
ever, we  find  no  trace),  it  was  not  legally  competent  to  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  to  give,  or  to  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  to 
accept  or  exercise,  any  such  jurisdiction. 

"  There  remains  one  point  to  be  considered.  It  was  contended 
before  us  that,  if  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  had  no  jurisdiction, 
his  judgement  was  a  nullity,  and  that  no  appeal  could  lie 
from  a  nullity  to  Her  Majesty  in  Council. 

"  But  that  is  by  no  means  the  consequence  of  holding  that  the 
respondent  had  no  jurisdiction.  The  Bishop  of  Capetown, 
acting  under  the  authorit}-  which  the  Queen's  letters 
patent  purported  to  give,  asserts  that  he  has  held  a  court 
of  justice,  and  that  with  certain  legal  forms  he  has  pro- 
nounced a  judicial  sentence  ;  and  that  by  such  sentence  he 
has  deposed  the  Bishop  of  Natal  from  his  office  of  Bishop, 
and  deprived  him  of  his  see.  He  also  asserts  that,  the 
sentence  having  been  published  in  the  diocese  of  Natal,  the 
clergy  and  inhabitants  of  the  diocese  are  thereby  deprived 
of  all  episcopal  superintendence.  Whether  these  proceed- 
ings have  the  effect  which  is  attributed  to  them  by  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown,  is  a  question  of  the  greatest  import- 
ance, and  one  which  we  feel  bound  to  decide.  We  have 
already  shown  that  there  was  no  power  to  confer  any 
jurisdiction  on  the  respondent  as  Metropolitan.  The 
attempt  to  give  appellate  jurisdiction  to  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  is  equally  invalid. 

"  This  important  question  can  be  decided  only  by  the  Sove- 
reign as  Head  of  the  Established  Church,  and  depositary 
of  the  ultimate  appellate  jurisdiction.  .  ,  . 

"  Unless  a  controversy,  such  as  that  which  is  presented  by 
this  appeal  and  petition,  falls  to  be  determined  by  the 
ultimate  jurisdiction  of  the  Crown,  it  is  plain  that  there 
would  be  a  denial  of  justice,  and  no  remedy  for  great  public 
inconvenience  and  mischief." 


264  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 


To  Th.  Shepstone,  Esq. 

"23  Sussex  Place,  April  10,  1865. 
"  Doubtless  before  this  the  news  of  the  '  decision  '  will  have 
reached  Natal,  and  you  will  agree  with  me,  I  think,  in 
considering  that  we  have  gained  a  complete  victory.  The 
Tractarians  (Dr.  Pusey,  &c.)  try  to  make  out  that  they  have 
got  as  much  out  of  it  as  I  ;  that,  if  Bishop  Gray  has  lost 
his  power,  I  have  lost  mine  ;  that  the  Church  of  South 
Africa  is  free,  &c.  These  gratulations  are,  in  reality,  only 
pretences  to  hide  their  discomfiture.  As  they  do  not  mean 
to  give  up  their  posts  and  incomes  within  the  good  old 
Church  of  England,  it  was,  of  course,  necessary  to  make  out 
that  the  decision  was  just  what  they  wanted.  But  every 
day  shows  more  and  more  clearly  the  importance  of  it  to 
our  cause,  and  the  devastation  which  it  brings  to  theirs. 
The  whole  edifice  which  they  have  been  so  carefully  piling 
up  for  years  has  toppled  all  at  once  to  the  ground.  Of 
course,  the  Long  judgement  prepared  us  to  find  that  we  had 
no  '  coercive  jurisdiction  '  by  patent  over  our  clergy,  but 
only  that  which  their  contracts  under  their  licences  have 
given  us.  But,  as  I  have  not  the  least  wish  to  exercise  any 
such  jurisdiction,  ....  this  part  of  the  decision,  however 
destructive  it  may  be  to  Bishop  Gray's  notions  of  authority, 
is  perfectly  acceptable  to  me.  It  is  not,  indeed,  certain  that 
it  does  apply  to  Natal,  for  the  question  would  still  have  to 
be  decided,  if  any  case  of  discipline  arose,  whether  Natal 
had  representative  institutions  when  it  had  merely  a  nominee 
Legislative  Council.  However,  I  am  never  likely  to  raise 
the  question,  and  so  we  will  consider  all  coercive  jurisdic- 
tion by  patent-right  gone.  But  what  then  .?  The  patent 
is  perfectly  valid,  as  ever,  to  give  title,  position,  protection, 
independence,  and  (which  is  of  most  importance  perhaps) 
to  constitute  me  a  lay-corporation  for  holding  lands  in  trust 
for  the  English  Church,  and  transmitting  them  to  my 
successors.  .  .  .  Thus  there  can  be  no  Bishop  of  the  Church 
of  England  in  the  colony  but  myself;  and  no  one  can  hold 
land  for  the  English  Church  but  myself     If  any  like  to  join 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  265 

the  Church  of  South  Africa,  of  course  they  may  do  so,  as 
they  might  have  done  all  along. 
"  But  Bishop  Gray  has  no  power  whatever  to  interfere  in  any 
of  the  affairs  of  the  CJinrch  of  England  in  Natal, — not  even, 
I  suspect,  as  holding  lands  in  trust  for  it,  for  a  very  curious 
case  arises  out  of  the  recent  decision.  .  .  .  By  his  old 
patent  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  was  a  lay-corporation^  and, 
as  such,  had  lands  granted  to  him  in  Natal  in  trust  for  the 
English  Church.  What  became  of  these  lands  when  that 
corporation  was  destroyed  by  the  cancelling  of  his  former 
patent?  With  whom  was  the  trust  vested  during  the 
fifteen  days  when  there  was  no  Bishop  of  Capetown,  and 
no  patent  constituting  the  office  }  Lawyers  tell  me  that 
by  English  law  the  property  in  that  case  would  return  to 
the  donor,  and  be  helci  by  him  in  trust  for  the  object  in 
question.  But  who  was  the  donor  .''  Not  the  Queen 
in  England,  but  the  Queen  in  Natal,  represented  by  the 
Governor  and  Executive  Council,  and  the  Queen  had 
no  power,  by  a  stroke  of  her  pen  in  the  new  patent,  to 
re-grant  those  lands  in  trust  to  the  new  Bishop  of  Cape- 
town. He  should  have  applied  to  the  Colonial  Government. 
If  so,  the  cathedral  and  other  lands,  supposed  to  be  held 
by  Bishop  Gray  in  Natal  on  trust,  are  really  held  by 
the  Government,  and  would,  I  suppose,  on  application  be 
re-granted  to  me,  in  accordance  with  the  decision  of  the 
Privy  Council." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place,  May  9,  1865. 
.  .  .  .  "  The  Colonial  Bishoprics  Eund  Committee,  con- 
sisting mainly,  I  believe,  of  the  Archbishops  and  Bishops, 
have  decided,  it  seems,  to  do  what  honourable  laymen, 
I  imagine,  would  not  have  thought  of  doing,  viz.  to 
withhold  my  income  until  they  are  compelled  to  pay  it. 
I  have  just  heard  ....  that  they  are  doing  this  without 
any  expectation  of  finally  succeeding  in  their  attempt,  but 
only  to  cause  annoyance,  and  especially  delay  in  my  return 
to  Natal.     They  expect  (my  friend  says)  to  be  able  to  keep 


266  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

me  here  till  perhaps  Christmas.  .  .  .  And  this  private 
information  is  fully  confirmed  up  to  the  present  by  the 
course  they  have  taken.  First,  they  gained  a  fortnight  by 
the  pretext  that  they  had  not  had  a  meeting,  though  they 
were  all  in  I.ondon  at  the  time  of  the  decision.  Then  they 
merely  referred  me  to  their  solicitors.  .  .  .  We  go  to  the 
solicitors,  and  offer  to  lay  a  case  with  them  before  Council, 
if  they  are  in  any  doubt  as  to  any  legal  question.  The 
solicitors  reply  that  they  know  nothing  at  all  about  the 
matter,  have  not  read  any  of  the  ^^documents,  &c.,  &c.,  but 
as  soon  as  we  file  our  bill  they  will  take  advice.  We 
are  therefore  obliged  to  file  a  bill  in  Chancery,  and  my 
solicitors  yesterday  requested  them  to  receive  service  of  the 
same.  They  reply  that  they  have  no  instructions  to  receive 
service  ;  whereupon  my  agents  have  told  them  that,  if  they 
do  not  consent  to  receive  service  to-morrow,  they  shall 
regard  their  proceedings  as  frivolous  and  vexatious,  and  go 
down  and  serve  upon  the  two  Archbishops  themselves,  who 
are  made  defendants.  When  the  bill  is  served,  they  have 
a  month  by  law  before  they  need  say  what  course  they  will 
take.  Some  think  that  they  will  knock  under,  seeing  that 
they  have  not  a  shadow  of  ground  on  which  to  stand.  But 
I  am  by  no  means  sure  of  this.  .  .  .  For  the  present  I 
adhere  to  my  purpose  of  leaving  England  about  the  end  of 
July.  For  my  friends  are  not  idle,  and  are,  I  believe,  going 
to  raise  a  sum  which  is  to  be  used  for  my  income  while  this 
law^-suit  is  pending,  and  then  to  be  left  at  my  disposal." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place,  July  9,  1865. 
"  As  I  anticipated,  the  attempt  to  crush  me  by  stopping  my 
income  has  resulted  in  a  miserable  failure.  Thus  far  the 
'  fund '  has  amounted  to  about  i?3,ooo  without  any  publica- 
tion of  it.  .  .  .  In  fact,  it  has  been  quite  a  triumph  for  the 
party  of  progress.  .  .  , 
"  The  hopes  of  my  first  preface  have  been  actually  fulfilled, 
even  before  the  time  I  gave  for  it.     I  said  in  five  years,  and 


I 


! 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  267 

behold  in  three  the  terms  of  Subscription  for  clergy  have 
been  already  relaxed.  We  are  now  only  required  to  say 
that  '  we  assent  to  the  Articles  and  Liturgy '  (assent  in 
what  sense,  for  what  reason,  whether  as  a  temporar)^ 
arrangement,  a  compromise,  &c.,  is  left  perfectly  open), 
and  that  we  '  believe  its  doctrine  generally  to  be  agreeable 
to  Holy  Scripture,'  without,  therefore,  being  tJ'ue  in  itself 
or  in  any  of  its  details.  But  more  of  these  things  when 
we  meet." 

To   THE   SAME. 

"  Sussex  Place,  August  9,  1865. 

"  We  hope  by  this  day  week  to  be  going  down  the  Channel, 
the  Verulain  being  fixed  to  sail  on  the  15th.  .  .  .  So,  please 
God,  we  hope  to  reach  Natal  some  time  about  the  end  of 
October  or  beginning  of  November.  ...  If  you  cannot  be 
at  Durban  when  we  arrive,  I  should  like  to  have  a  line 
from  }'ou  awaiting  me  there,  just  to  tell  me  how  things 
stand.  .  .  .  My  desire  and  my  duty  will  be  to  be  as  patient 

'  and  quiet  as  possible,  to  act  simply  when  required  to  main- 
tain my  own  rights,  without  taking  any  notice  of  mere 
insults,  anathemas,  &c.,  &c.  .  .  . 

"  Up  to  this  moment  the  council  and  trustees  of  the  Colonial 
Bishoprics  Fund  have  not  given  any  reply  to  my  case  in 
Chancer)-,  though  we  filed  it  more  than  three  months  ago. 
They  have  three  times  asked  for  more  time.  My  lawyers 
say  that  there  can  be  no  reason  that  will  bear  the  light  of 
da)'.  I  must  believe  that  the  whole  proceeding  is  a  mere 
piece  of  manoeuvring  on  the  part  of  the  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
&c.,  to  gain  ii7ne  for  BisJiop  Gray,  and  especially  to  see 
what  effect  can  be  produced  on  the  clergy  and  laity  of 
Natal  by  working  upon  their  minds  with  the  statement 
that  my  income  was  stopped,  and  letting  the  report  go  out 
mail  after  mail,  while  I  should  be  unable  to  contradict  it  or 
to  counteract  it  by  showing  that  it  w^as  stopped  for  no  just 
ground  whatever.  In  England,  through  the  'fund/  this 
object  has  utterly  failed.  I  only  hope  that  the  laity  of 
Natal  have  been  sufficiently  alive  to  the  craft  of  the  High 


268  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 

Church  party,  and  sufficiently  awake  to  the  consequences 
to  themselves,  should  the  schemes  of  that  party  be  allowed 
to  triumph." 

To  John  Merrifield,  Esq. 

"  Kensington,  August  12,  1865. 
'I  duly  received  both  your  kind  letters,  and  now,  having  just 
packed  my  books,  &c.,  sit  down  to  write  just  one  line  of 
farewell.  Most  heartily  do  I  thank  you  and  all  my  friends 
for  the  help  you  have  given  in  the  time  of  need.  (You  will 
be  glad  to  hear  that  the  Bishop  of  London's  chaplain  has 
signed  the  Fund, — of  course  with  the  Bishop's  permission.) 
I  am  going,  please  God,  to  fight  out  the  battle  for  liberty 
of  thought  and  speech  within  the  Church  of  England  at 
Natal.  But  many  things  lead  me  to  think  that  I  shall 
not  be  very  long  away  from  England.  If  it  please  God, 
I  may  hope  to  see  you  and  shake  you  by  the  hand  once 
more. 

I  wish  you  would  keep  Fawcett  up  to  the  mark.  Let  him 
bring  in  a  Bill  (if  nobody  else  will)  to  remove  the  disabilities 
of  the  clergy.  Say  nothing  about  'indelibility,'  &c.  If  any 
one  believes  in  that  dogma,  nobody  will  prevent  them  from 
so  believing.  But  let  a  clergyman  be  free,  while  not  hold- 
ing clerical  office,  to  engage  in  any  trade  or  profession  or 
be  elected  to  Parliament.  There  are  clergy  enough  in  the 
House  of  Lords  to  prevent  any  progress.  We  shall  never 
have  a  real  reform  of  the  Church  system,  till  we  have 
some  in  the  House  of  Commons  who  know  where  the  shoe 
^    pinches." 

To  THE  Rev.  G.  W.  Cox.  J 

"  Kensington,  August  14,  1865. 
Many  thanks  for  }'our  most  kind  and  loving  letter.  We 
looked  for  you  all  day  yesterday,  the  more  so,  as  a  very 
important  proposition  has  been  made  by  Mr.  Marriott 
which  will  perhaps  bring  me  back  at  the  end  of  twelve 
months.  I  have  a  heap  of  letters  to  write  to-day,  so  cannot 
say  more  but  to  assure  you  of  our  affection,  and  wish  you 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  269 


ever}'   happiness I    feel  as    though    I  had   not   half 

expressed   my  grateful   thanks  for   all  the  most  able  and 

effective  help  which  you  have  rendered  to  me  and  to  the 

cause  during  these  three  years.  May  you  now  be  recruited 
for  further  work  hereafter." 


To  Sir  Charles  Lyell. 

"  Kensington,  August  15,  1865. 
"  In  an  hour  we  expect  to  start  for  the  ship.  So  I  use  the 
last  moments  to  say  farewell  to  Lady  Lyell  and  yourself, 
and  to  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  all  your  innumerable 
acts  of  kindness  to  me  and  mine  during  the  last  eventful 
three  years.  I  duly  received  your  letter  from  Kissingen, 
about  three  weeks  ago,  but  delayed  replying  to  it,  wishing 
to  be  able  to  communicate  the  latest  intelligence.  There 
are  now  one  or  two  important  matters  to  name,  in  which  I 
think  you  will  be  much  interested.  (i)  The  trustees  of 
the  Colonial  Bishoprics  Fund  have  at  last  sent  in  their 
reply  (provoked,  I  fancy,  by  the  proceedings  at  Freemasons 
Tavern).  It  reached  our  hands  on  Friday  last,  after  three 
months  of  incubation.  But  it  contains  literally  nothing  of 
the  slightest  consequence,  and  when  pulled  to  pieces  by  m}- 
lawyers  will,  I  am  afraid,  exhibit  the  conduct  of  the 
trustees  and  council  in  no  v^ery  creditable  light.  Thc}- 
actually  '  crave  leave  to  refer  '  to  a  letter  of  Miss  Burdett 
Coutts  (!),  addressed  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  a 
few  weeks  ago,  as  a  proof  that  none  of  the  subscribers  to  the 
Colonial  Bishoprics  Fund  ever  contemplated  supporting 
'  such  a  Bishop  as  that  which  the  judgement  of  the  Priv}' 
Council  decides  the  plaintiff  to  be.'  Of  course,  the  reason- 
ing, so  far  as  it  is  worth  anything,  applies  equally  against 
their  paying  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  and  others  their 
incomes.  But  the  genius  of  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  is  shown, 
I  expect,  in  this  matter  magnificentl}-.  "Wxq  fact  is,  as  Mr. 
W.  M.  James  told  us  in  consultation  a  few  weeks  ago,  that 
Miss  Coutts  is  so  displeased  with  Bishop  Gray's  proceedings 
in   separating   himself  and    his   flock   from    the    Anglican 


270  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vi. 


Church  that,  while  no  friend  of  mine,  she  has  taken  legal 
advice  as  to  whether  she  could  not  withdraw  the  whole 
endowment  of  his  see  (which  she  gave),  on  the  ground  that 
she  did  not  contemplate  founding  a  bishopric  independent 
of  all  control,  &c.  (I  don't  know  the  exact  words  ;  but 
that  I  believe  to  be  her  meaning.)  And  so  the  council 
adroitly  use  such  a  letter  as  bearing  against  me.  .... 
This  gives  you  a  specimen  of  the  sort  of  arguments 
they  employ.  Their  '  reply,'  as  one  of  my  counsel  say,  is 
childish  and  ridiculous,  and  amazing  as  coming  from  such 
men  as  Sir  W.  P.  Wood  and  Mr.  Gladstone. 
(2)  On  Sunday  last  Mr.  Marriott  made  to  me  a  most  im- 
portant proposition,  which  may  have  the  effect  of  bringing 
me  back  to  England  much  earlier  than  I  had  at  all  thought 
of — perhaps  as  soon  as  my  case  is  decided.  He  is  prepared 
to  bear  the  whole  expense  of  bringing  out  a  new  translation 
of  the  Bible,  with  notes  of  all  kinds,  excursus,  &c.,  bringing 
it  up  to  the  latest  results  of  criticism.  He  wishes  me  to 
return,  and  take  the  office  of  chief  editor,  and  to  secure  the 
services  of  ten  of  the  first  men  on  the  Continent,  and  five 
Englishmen,  so  that  the  book  may  be  a  standard  work ; 
and  being  thus  the  result  of  the  combined  action  of 
Englishmen,  Germans,  Dutch,  and  French,  may  become 
European,  though  he  says  he  cares  principally  for  the 
English.  He  reckons  that  it  will  take  five  years  to  complete 
it,  and  a  sum  of  i^20,ooo  ;  and  he  is  prepared  to  place  that 
sum  in  the  hands  of  trustees  as  soon  as  ever  the  plans  are 
sufficiently  advanced.  Mr.  Vansittart  Neale,  Rev.  H.  B. 
Wilson,  and  Prof.  Kuenen,  are  already  consulted  about  it  ; 
and  the  former  will  probably  carry  on  the  preliminary 
correspondence  during  my  absence.  The  idea  is  to  divide 
the  whole  Bible  among  the  different  writers,  the  special 
work  of  each  person  to  be  printed  and  sent  round  to  all  the 
others  for  their  notes,  then  returned  to  the  writer,  then 
forwarded  to  a  committee  of  three  or  four  in  London,  then 
once  more  referred  to  the  writer  for  his  final  corrections. 
This  is,  of  course,  only  a  rough  sketch  of  our  present 
notions.      But    I    think   you  will   feel  that  Mr.  Marriott's 


1863-65.         WORK  IN  ENGLAND— THE  BATTLE.  271 

proposal  is  a  very  noble  one,  and  the  work  contemplated 
one  of  the  very  best  that  could  be  devised  for  carrying  on 
the  movement  in  favour  of  free  thought. 
"  (3)  Another  project,  which  I  fancy  Mr.  Domville  will  take 
in  hand,  is  to  form  a  society  on  a  scientific  basis  (like  any 
other,  Geological,  Astronomical,  &c.),  for  a  scientific  investi- 
gation into  the  origin  and  history  of  all  religions.  It  would 
have  a  central  room  in  London,  with  foreign  and  English 
theological  reviews  of  all  kinds,  a  library,  and  a  bi- 
monthly journal,  in  which  would  be  discussed  all  matters 
of  interest  connected  with  the  various  religions  of  the 
world." 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE   SO-CALLED   TRIAL   AT   CAPETOWN. 

The  change  brought  about  in  the  relations  between  Bishop 
Gray  and  Bishop  Colenso  after  the  pubHcation  of  the  Com- 
mentary on  the  Romans  was  great  indeed.  In  the  Life  of 
the  former  there  are  some  indications  that  Bishop  Gray  re- 
garded himself  as  having  been  treated  not  altogether  fairly 
by  his  brother  Bishop  ;  and  that,  in  short,  the  Metropolitan  felt 
that  there  had  been  some  undue  concealment  of  opinion  on 
the  part  of  his  suffragan.  What  has  been  already  said  must 
be  more  than  enough  to  show  the  real  state  of  the  case.  The 
biographer  of  Bishop  Gray  admits  that  their  intercourse  up 
to  that  time  had  been  "  most  kindly  and  affectionate." 

"  Bishop  Gray,"  he  tells  us,  "  was  in  very  weak  health  from 
over-work  and  over-excitement,  and,  as  he  himself  says,  he 
was  watched  over  and  cared  for  very  tenderly  "  |H 

by  his  new  fellow-labourer  ;  and  indeed,  until  the  period  of 
Dr.  Colenso's  return  to  England  in  1862,  they  were  "as  j 
brothers."  Their  correspondence  was  unceasing  and  "  most 
confidential."  We  need  not  doubt  it ;  but  Bishop  Gray's 
powers  of  discernment  are  more  open  to  question.  During 
all  these  years  it  is  quite  impossible  that  in  their  intimate  com- 
munings Bishop  Colenso  can  have  said  anything  expressing, 


i 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  273 

or  even  implying,  agreement  with  Bishop  Gray's  ideas  of  the 
Christian  Church,  of  its  cathohcity,  and  of  its  faith.  It  is 
impossible  that  he  can  have  veiled,  or  that  he  could  have  the 
slightest  wish  to  veil,  the  wide  differences  betw'een  his  own 
convictions  and  those  of  Bishop  Gray  on  these  momentous  and 
vital  subjects.  It  would  be  equally  impossible,  we  might 
suppose,  for  the  latter  to  converse  for  any  long  time  without 
giving  utterance  to  his  theories,  or  beliefs,  on  the  questions  of 
substitution,  of  the  absolute  truth  of  every  statement  in  the 
Old  Testament  and  the  New,  of  the  unending  torturing  of 
those  who  do  not  quit  this  life  in  a  state  of  grace  ;  and 
most  certainly,  if  he  did  so.  Bishop  Colenso  would  have 
avowed  his  own  entire  rejection  of  those  theories  or  beliefs. 
If  Bishop  Gray  had  been  possessed  of  even  ordinary  insight, 
he  must  have  known  that  his  own  notions  on  the  whole  range 
of  theology  must  sooner  or  later  come  into  conflict  with  those 
of  his  colleague.  Whether  the  battle  should  be  fought  out 
between  themselves  personally  or  not,  he  would  have  seen 
that  the  contest  was  inevitable,  and  that  under  the  existing 
conditions  of  thought  in  England  it  could  not  be  very  long 
delayed.  But  from  first  to  last,  in  the  biography  of  Bishop 
Gray,  there  is  not  a  hint  that  the  faith  as  well  as  the  discipline 
and  the  ritual  of  Christendom  is  liable  to  change  and  modifica- 
tion, and  that  in  many  most  important  particulars  it  has  been 
modified  and  changed  already.  There  is  nowhere  the  least 
approach  to  an  admission  that  his  own  definitions,  or  even  his 
obiter  dicta,  on  any  theological  questions,  are  open  to  examin- 
ation, and  may  be  accepted  or  rejected  according  to  the 
weight  of  the  arguments  for  or  against  them.  Ever}-wherc 
there  is  the  assumption  that  his  own  opinions  are  in  com- 
plete harmony  with  those  of  the  Church,  and  that  he  cannot 
go  wrong  in  deciding  whether  those  of  any  one  else  are  or 
are  not,  in  the  same  harmony  with  them. 

If  a  man  in  such  a  condition   of  mind   as   this  failed    to 
VOL.  I.  T 


274  ^IFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

discern  the  great  gulf  which  separated  his  theology  from  that 
of  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  this  can  only  have  been  the  result  of 
a  lack  of  discernment  on  his  own  part  which  would  be 
astounding  but  for  the  slowness  with  which  such  men  are 
brought  to  see  that  others  do  not  think  like  themselves. 

The  seeds  of  future  strife  were,  indeed,  lavishly  sown  ;  but 
they  were  sown  by  Bishop  Gray,  not  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 
The  theology  of  the  latter  may  have  been  wrong,  but  it  was 
not  aggressive.  That  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  would  admit 
of  no  differences,  and  respect  no  law.  He  must  have  his 
own  way,  because  his  own  way  was  the  Church's  way  ; 
and  if  he  could  not  have  it,  it  must  be  because  the  ex- 
isting state  of  things  involved  an  intolerable  tyranny  some- 
where. The  serene  conviction  of  his  own  absolute  orthodoxy 
is  thus  accompanied  by  a  stern  resolution  to  obtain  the 
freedom  which  shall  enable  him  to  put  down  all  opposition 
to  "  Catholic  truth," — that  is,  to  his  own  opinions.  Hence  his 
letters  and  his  public  utterances  are  filled  with  almost  in- 
cessant denunciations  of  the  thraldom  in  which  the  Church 
of  England  is  held  in  the  mother  country,  and  to  which  he  is 
resolved  for  himself  never  to  submit.  This  thraldom  extends 
to  the  determination  of  matters  of  doctrine — in  other  words, 
of  faith  ;  and  as  these  decisions  are  put  forth  as  decisions  of 
the  Church  of  England,  his  rejection  of  them  commits  him  to 
rebellion  against  the  law  of  that  Church,  to  which  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  yielded  a  willing  and  hearty  obedience.  m 

"  I  will  not  be  bound,"  he  says,  January  1863,  "by  the  narrow 
limits  of  the  Church's  faith  laid  down  by  Dr.  Lushington 
or  the  Privy  Council.  I  will  not  recognise  them  as  an 
authority  as  to  what  are  the  doctrines  which  the  Church  of 
England  allows  to  be  taught.  The  Privy  Council  will  make 
itself,  if  not  checked,  the  de  facto  spiritual  head  of  the  Church 
of  England  and  of  all  religious  bodies  in  the  colonies."  ^ 

^  Life  of  Bishop  Gray,  ii.  32. 


I 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  275 

If  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  was  not  bound  to  these  ad- 
missions, the  English  Archbishops  with  their  sufifragans  were 
bound,  and  it  was  out  of  their  power  to  stamp  as  heresy 
teaching  which  does  not  contravene  those  decisions.  Was 
there,  then,  to  be  one  law  for  England,  and  another  for  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope  ?  In  the  case  of  Bishop  Colenso  he  was 
himself  the  self-st)-led  judge  ;  }-et  the  judge  could  write, 
July  20,   1863  : — 

"  If  he  is  tolerated,  the  Church  has  no  faith,  is  not  a  true 
witness  to  her  Lord.  I  am  prepared  to  go  through  any- 
thing and  endure  any  loss  in  defence  of  the  Bible  as  the 
Word  of  God,  and  of  the  faith  once  for  all  delivered."  ^ 

In  short,  the  condemnation  of  the  defendant  was  pre- 
determined. 

''  The  Church  of  England  is  no  true  branch  of  the  Church  of 
Christ,  nor  is  her  South  African  daughter,  if  either  allows 
one  of  her  Bishops  to  teach  what  Natal  teaches  and  to 
ordain  others  to  teach  the  same.  If  the  faith  is  committed 
to  us  as  a  deposit,  we  must  keep  it  at  all  hazards  ;  and  if 
the  world  and  the  courts  of  the  world  tell  us  that  we  have 
no  power,  we  must  use  the  power  which  Christ  has  given 
us,  and  cut  off  from  Him  and  from  His  Church  avowed 
heretics,  and  call  upon  the  faithful  to  hold  no  communion 
with  them."  - 

Bishop  Gra)'  was  thus  resoh'ed  to  ha\'e  his  own  wa)-.  If 
any  authority  crossed  his  path,  that  authorit\-  was  of  the 
world — in  other  words,  was  anti-Christian.  In  the  Bishop 
of  an  English  see  this  would  be  a  defiance  of  the  Sovereign  in 
Council.  This  defiance  he  at  Capetown,  in  disregard  of  the 
Apostolic  warning  that  the  powers  which  be  are  ordained  of 
God,  was  quite  prepared  to  offer. 

"  I  fully  expect  to  be  in  open  collision,  before  it  [the  so-called 

1  Life  of  Bishop  Gray,  ii.  63.  -  lb.  ii.  64. 

T  2 


276  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

trial  of  Bishop  Colenso]   is  done,  with  these   civil  courts, 
which  will,  if  not  curbed,  destroy  the  Church."  ^ 

"  It  is  through  civil  courts  that  the  world  in  these  days  seeks 
to  crush  the  Church.  They  represent  the  world's  feelings 
and  give  judgement  accordingly."  ^ 

The  judgement,  therefore,  which  decided  the  lawfulness  of 
Mr.  Gorham's  position  was  a  false  and  unrighteous  sentence, 
which  the  Church  was  supposed  to  have  rejected.  Come 
what  might,  his  own  sentences  should  never  be  submitted  to, 
or  revised  by,  such  a  court. 

"I  will  not  go  before  any  civil  court  in  the  matter.  ...  If 
they  send  us  back  Colenso,  I  will  excommunicate  him.  .  ,  . 
Were  I  to  spend  another  fortune  in  vindicating  the  discipline 
of  the  Church,  I  know  what  English  lawyers'  hatred  of 
ecclesiastical  courts  and  ecclesiastical  authority  would  lead 
the  Privy  Council  to  decide.  ...  If  the  Church  does  not 
denounce  the  judgement  which  I  hear  is  to  be  delivered  in 
re  Essays  and  Reviews,  she  will  cease  to  witness  for  Christ. 
She  must  destroy  that  masterpiece  of  Satan  for  the  over- 
throw of  the  faith,  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy 
Council  as  her  court  of  final  appeal,  or  it  will  destroy 
her."  3 

"  The  Privy  Council  is  the  great  Dagon  of  the  English 
Church.     All  fall  down  before  it."  * 

"  The  world  cannot  crush  the  Church,  if  she  will  assert  her 
independence,  and  at  all  hazards  witness  for  Christ.  Her 
servility  is  her  great  curse,  and  will,  if  she  does  not  rise  up 
in  the  strength  of  her  God,  prove  her  ruin."  ^ 

"The  idea  is,"  he  writes,  April  4,  1864,  "  that  Colenso  will,  by 
claiming  churches,  or  by  an  action  against  me,  get  into  the 
Natal  court,  and  from  thence  to  the  Privy  Council,  which, 
I  verily  believe,  would  affect  to  reinstate  him,  for  this  awful 
and    profane   judgement    [on  Essays  and  Revieivs'\    would 

^  Life  of  Bishop  Gray,  ii.  69.  '^  lb.  ii.  108. 

^  lb.  ii.  p.  113.  "J  lb.  ii.  119.  ^  lb.  ii.  125. 


1 863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  277 

cover  all  that  he  has  written,  and  probably  was  intended 
to  do  so."  ^ 
"  I  believe  that  if  the  Privy  Council  can  throw  the  Church,  it 
will  ;  and  I  believe  that  the  Church  must  defy  and  destro)- 
it  as  a  court  of  appeal  or  be  destroyed  by  it.  In  that 
body  all  the  enmity  of  the  world  against  the  Church  of 
Christ  is  gathered  up  and  embodied."  ^ 

The  world  here  spoken  of  is  the  English  Sovereign  in 
Council,  and  the  court  so  formed  is  represented  as  the  mouth- 
piece of  Satan — in  other  words,  as  a  power  which  has  for  its 
object  no  other  work  than  the  extension  of  evil.  But  it  is 
this  power  which  represents  the  executive  of  England,  to 
carry  out  laws  against  theft,  violence,  perjury,  and  other 
offences.  Do  these  laws  come  from  a  source  which  is  a 
fountain  simply  of  evil  .'  To  speak  of  such  language  as 
ludicrously  absurd  is  to  treat  it  with  fully  sufficient  lenity. 
The  practical  mischief  wrought  by  it  might  be  but  small,  so 
long  as  Bishop  Gray  had  to  deal  with  an  absolutely  subservient 
and  unthinking  clergy  and  laity  ;  but  the  first  sign  of  re- 
sistance to  the  }'oke  so  imposed  would  be  followed  by  the 
authoritative  declaration  that  on  these  subjects  the  exercise 
of  thought  except  in  certain  definite  lines  could  not  be 
allowed.  This  position  cannot  be  maintained  in  England, 
it  to  be  maintained  elsewhere  } 

It  was  on  this  point  that  the  whole  controvers}'  turned. 
The  one  question  was  whether  the  law  of  England  was  or  was 
not  to  be  defied  with  impunit}^  The  letters  of  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  to  the  Metropolitan  in  1S58  should  have  impressed 
upon  the  latter  the  hopelessness  of  any  attempt  to  try,  or  to 
pass  sentence  upon,  any  of  his  suffragans  except  by  such 
means  as  might  lawfully  be  used  for  this  purpose  in  England. 
They  should  have  taught  him  that  the  theories  of  union  and 

'  Life  of  Bishop  Gfay,  ii.  137.  -  /l>.  ii.  158. 


278  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 


full  communion  between  the  South  African  and  the  English 
Churches  must  go  for  nothing  so  long  as  the  South  African 
clergy  were  deprived  of  a  single  right  of  which  they  would 
have  possession  in  England.  Aware  of  the  danger,  but  either 
not  heeding  it,  or  despising  it,  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  re- 
solved to  take  his  own  course,  and  thus  found  himself  in 
antagonism  with  English  law  ;  but  nothing  had  happened 
for  which  he  might  not,  had  it  pleased  him,  have  been  fully 
prepared,  nor  was  there  the  smallest  ground  for  the  pretence 
that  in  no  other  way  than  that  which  he  adopted  was  it 
possible  to  obtain  a  decision  in  the  case  on  its  merits.  In 
such  a  controversy  he  could,  forsooth,  no  more  admit  the 
supreme  authority  of  the  Crown  than  Thomas  of  Canterbury 
could  abandon  the  rights  of  his  order  to  the  usurpation  of  the 
civil  power.  This  was  the  one  issue,  and  from  first  to  last  he 
met  it  with  an  uncompromising  resistance.  But  he  had  known 
for  fiv-e  years  that  his  theory  found  no  acceptance  with  the 
Bishop  of  Natal,  although  he  did  not  know  that  there  had 
been  a  time  when  it  found  no  acceptance  with  the  Bishop  of 
Grahamstown.  Others  could  be  consistent  as  well  as  himself ; 
and  therefore  his  assumption  of  jurisdiction  was  summarily 
met  by  a  denial  of  the  claim.  The  summons  to  appear  before 
his  tribunal  at  Capetown  was  duly  served  upon  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  in  London,  and  when  the  day  of  trial  came,  the  Bishop's 
protest  was  by  Dr.  Bleek  (who  acted  with  the  utmost  judi- 
ciousness as  his  agent)  handed  to  the  Metropolitan.  This 
protest  was  conveyed  in  the  following  letter  : — 

"To  THE  Right  Reverend  the  Lord  Bishop  of 
Capetown. 

"  London,  October  5,  1S63. 
"  My  Lord, 

"  I   have  received   from   your  Lordship's   registrar  a  citation 
calling   upon    me  to  appear  before    you  at   Capetown   on 


II 


i863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  279 

November  17,  there  to  answer  a  certain  charge  of  *  false 
teaching '  preferred  against  me  by  the  Very  Rev.  the  Dean 
of  Capetown,  the  Venerable  the  Archdeacon  of  Grahams- 
town,  and  the  Venerable  the  Archdeacon  of  George. 

"  I  am  advised  that  your  Lordship  has  no  jurisdiction  over 
me,  and  no  legal  right  to  take  cognisance  of  the  charge  in 
question.  I  therefore  protest  against  the  proceedings  in- 
stituted before  you,  and  I  request  you  to  take  notice  that 
I  do  not  admit  their  legality,  and  that  I  shall  take  such 
measures  to  contest  the  lawfulness  of  your  proceedings,  and, 
if  necessary,  to  resist  the  execution  of  any  judgement  adverse 
to  me  which  you  may  deliver,  as  I  shall  be  advised  to  be 
proper. 

^'  My  absence  from  the  Cape  will  make  it  impossible  for  me 
to  know  what  view  your  Lordship  may  take  of  your  juris- 
diction till  long  after  your  decision  has  been  announced 
and  I  have  no  desire  to  cause  any  unnecessary  delay  in  the 
settlement  of  this  matter,  such  as  w^ould  be  produced  if  I 
were  to  confine  myself  to  a  mere  protest  against  your 
jurisdiction.  I  therefore  think  it  better  to  state  at  once 
the  answer  which,  if  you  have  any  jurisdiction  in  this 
matter,  I  have  to  make  to  the  charge  brought  against 
me. 

^'  I  admit  that  I  published  the  matter  quoted  in  the  articles 
annexed  to  the  citation  ;  but  I  claim  that  the  passages 
extracted  be  read  in  connexion  with  the  rest  of  the  works 
from  which  they  are  taken.  And  I  deny  that  the  publica- 
tion of  these  passages,  or  any  of  them,  constitutes  any 
offence  against  the  laws  of  the  United  Church  of  England 
and  Ireland. 

*"  For  further  explanation  of  my  meaning  in  some  of  the 
passages  objected  to  from  my  Commentary  on  the  Epistle 
to  the  Romans,  I  beg  to  refer  your  Lordship  to  a  letter 
addressed  to  you  on  or  about  August  1861,^  in  reply  to  one 
from  yourself  expressing  strong  disapproval  of  the  views 
advanced  by  me  in  that  work  ;  and  with  reference  to  some 

^  This  letter  is  given  in  Appendix  A. 


'So  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 


of  those  objected  to  from  my  work  on   the   Pentateuch,  I 

desire    also    to   request  your   attention   to    the   preface    to 

Part  III.,  a  copy  of  which  I  forward  by  this  mail. 
"  I  have  instructed   Dr.  Bleek,  of  Capetown,  to  appear  before 

your  Lordship  on  my  behalf  for  the  following  purposes  : — 
"  First,  to  protest  against  your  Lordship's  jurisdiction, 
"  Secondly,  to  read  this  letter  (of  which   I   have  sent   him  a 

duplicate),  as  my  defence,  if  your  Lordship  should  assume 

to  exercise  jurisdiction. 
"  Thirdly,   if  you   should   assume  jurisdiction   and   deliver  a 

judgement    adverse    to    me,    to    give    }'ou    notice    of    m}* 

intention  to  appeal  from  such  judgement. 
"  I  have  the  honour  to  be,  my  Lord,  your  Lordship's  faithful 

and  obedient  servant, 

"J.  W.  Natal." 

In  the  labyrinth  of  controversies  provoked  by  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Bishop's  criticisms  on  the  Pentateuch,  the  likeliest 
way  of  avoiding  confusion  is  to  keep  as  distinct  as  may  be 
practicable  the  several  strands  in  the  discussion,  which  may 
otherwise  seem  inextricable.  There  is  the  so-called  Cape- 
/  town  trial,  the  outcome  of  a  plan  deeply  laid,  not  by  Bishop 
Gray  alone,  but  by  Bishop  Wilberforce  and  his  colleagues  in 
England  ;  there  are  the  remarks  made  upon  that  trial  ;  the 
inquiry  before  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council,  , 
and  the  consequences  which  followed  from  that  inquiry  ;  and 
apart  from  these  is  the  ocean  of  literature,  good,  indifferent, 
and  bad,  called  into  existence  by  the  books  which  roused  the 
indignation  of  Bishop  Gray  and  his  adherents.  None  of  these 
can  be  dismissed  without  due  notice  ;  and  the  point  of  most 
importance  is  to  bring  out  the  real  position  and  meaning  of 
the  chief  actors  in  the  great  drama. 

The  charges  brought  against  the  Bishop  were  nine  in 
number.  In  the  first  schedule  he  was  accused  of  "  maintaining 
that  our  Blessed  Lord  did  not  die  in  man's  stead,  or  bear  the 
punishment  or  penalty  of  our  sins,  and  that  God  is  not  recon- 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  281 

ciled  to  us  by  the  death  of  His  Son."  B}'  the  second  he  was 
charged  with  holding  "  that  justification  is  a  consciousness  of 
being  counted  righteous  ;  and  that  all  men,  even  without  such 
consciousness,  are  treated  by  God  as  righteous,  and  counted 
righteous  ;  and  that  all  men,  as  members  of  the  great  human 
family,  are  dead  unto  sin,  and  risen  again  unto  righteousness." 
According  to  the  third  he  had  maintained  "  that  all  men  have 
the  new  birth  unto  righteousness  in  their  very  birth  hour,  and 
are  at  all  times  partaking  of  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ," 
thus  denying  "  that  the  holy  sacraments  are  generally  neces- 
sary to  salvation."  The  fourth  asserts  that  he  had  abandoned 
the  doctrine  of  the  endlessness  of  future  punishments.  In  the 
fifth  he  was  charged  with  den}-ing  that  the  Holy  Scripture  is 
the  Word  of  God,  and  with  asserting  that  it  only  contained  the 
Word  of  God.  The  sixth  charges  him  with  dealing  with  the 
Bible  as  a  common  book,  and  as  "  inspired  only  in  such  a 
manner  as  other  books  are  inspired."  The  seventh  charges 
him  with  denying  the  genuineness,  authenticity,  and  canonicit}' 
of  certain  books  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  eighth  ascribes 
to  him  a  denial  of  "  the  doctrine  that  our  Blessed  Lord  is  God 
and  man  in  one  person,"  because  he  maintains  "  that  He  was 
ignorant  and  in  error  upon  the  subject  of  the  authorship  and 
age  of  the  different  portions  of  the  Pentateuch."  And  in  the 
ninth  and  last  schedule  it  is  asserted  that  he  had  disparaged 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  incited  the  clergy  to 
disobey  the  laws  which  the}-  had  solemnl}'  promised  to  keep. 

Speaking  at  Pietermaritzburg  ^  a  few  months  later.  Bishop 
Gray  said  that  the  three  great  questions  mooted  in  these  charges 
were  no  less  than  these  :  "Is  there  a  written  revelation  from 
God  }     Is  our  Lord  God  incarnate  .''     Is  Christianity  true  }  " 

If  dispassionate  judges  can   anywhere  be  found,  the  first 

^  He  had  gone  thither,  as  we  have  already  seen,  p.  86—89,  *-o  announce 
to  the  people  of  Natal  that  their  Bishop  "had  rebelled  entirely,"  had 
"gone  astrav  and  would  never  come  back." 


282  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

impression  left  on  their  minds  would  not  improbably  be  that 
of  surprise  at  the  vast  apparatus  thus  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  accused,  and  the  immense  difficulty  which  the  latter  must 
experience  in  parrying  the  weapons  employed  against  him. 
Those  weapons  are — undefined  or  half-defined  terms,  and 
appeals  to  authorities  which  become  practically  co-extensive 
with  the  literature  of  Christendom.  There  are  sincere  be- 
lievers in  Christianity  and  in  revelation  ;  but  the  conceptions 
attached  to  these  words  are  not  always  the  same.  What  then 
is  Christianity,  and  what  is  a  written  revelation  }  And  so 
with  the  terms  employed  in  every  one  of  the  schedules. 
These  speak  of  vicarious  punishment,  of  the  reconciliation  of 
God  to  man,  and  of  man  to  God,  of  justification  and  salvation, 
of  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ,  of  punishment  and  of  in- 
spiration ;  but  all  these  are  words  to  which  meanings  are 
attached  diverging  from  each  other  so  far  that  the  difference 
of  degree  becomes  often  a  difference  in  kind.  All  that  we 
have  here  to  do  is  to  note  the  fact,  and  pass  on  to  the  argu- 
ments by  which  the  accusers  established  the  guilt  of  the 
Bishop  to  their  own  satisfaction  and  to  that  of  the  judge  with 
his  assessors. 

Offering  something  like  an  apology  for  language  which 
was  certainly  vehement  enough,  the  Dean  (Douglas)  of  Cape- 
town charged  the  Bishop  with  holding  that  "  God  is  absolute 
benevolence." 

■"  Considering  what  men  are,"  he  said,  "  and  how  insulting  sin 
is  to  that  Supreme  Governor  who  absolutely  hates  it,  I  am 
afraid  that  infinite  benevolence,  however  great  it  sounds,  is 
only  another  name  for  amiable  weakness  ;  but  it  is  in  this 
light,  and  in  this  light  alone,  that  the  Bishop  will  regard  the 
Almighty.  .  .  .  Upon  the  plea  of  showing  forth  the  love  of 
God  our  Father,  the  Bishop  has  put  forth  a  wild  though 
mystic  and  alluring  scheme  of  blind  benevolence,  which  is 
subversive  of  all  that  is  generally  known  as  Christianit} 


I 


iS63.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  283 

Professing  to  show  us  that  God  is  all  love,  he  represents 
Him  as' indifferent  to  evil."     (46.)  ^ 

The  Bishop  meant,  so  the  Dean  insisted, 

'"emphatically  to  deny  that  our  Lord's  sufferings  were  vicari- 
ous, or  that  any  act  of  His  was  needed  to  satisfy  the  Father 
before  He  could  forgive  the  world  its  sin.  .  .  .  Our  Lord, 
he  teaches,  died  for  us,  on  our  behalf,  to  show  His  love 
for  us,  to  express  and  display  His  boundless  sympathy  ; 
but  He  did  not  die  to  bear  our  sins  ;  He  did  not  bear 
the  weight  of  the  curse.  Man  needed  to  be  reconciled 
to  God  ;  but  God  always  loved  us,  and  was  never  estranged 
from  us." 

The  Dean's  own  opinions  on  these  subjects  he  held  to  be 
embodied  in  the  second  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  and  in 
other  statements  in  our  Articles  and  formularies  ;  and  he 
demanded  the  Bishop's  condemnation  not  on  this  ground 
only,  but  because  his  teaching  was  opposed 

"  to  the  faith  of  the  Church  Catholic  on  the  subject  of  sacrifice, 
satisfaction,  and  propitiation,  as  held  in  all  places,  and  at 
all  times."     (50.) 

Having  thus  spread  a  net  inclosing  a  wide  sea,  the  Dean 
held  it  to  be  the  business  of  the  accusers  to  take  "  the  results 
at  which  the  Church  has  arrived  already,"  and  to  test  the 
Bishop's  opinions  "  by  these  authoritative  conclusions."  As  to 
the  strictly  vicarious  character  of  Christ's  death  there  could, 
he  asserted,  be  no  question.  The  prophetic  words  of  Caiaphas 
were  on  this  point  quite  conclusive.  The  language  of  "  the 
Church  "  was  not  less  explicit. 

"  The  Church  has  always  taught  that  God  was  angry  with 
man  because  of  sin,  and  that  our  Lord,  sent  by  His  Father's 
love,  and  moved  by  His  own  affection  for  us,  stepped  in  to 

'  The  numbers  in  the  text  of  this  chapter  refer  to  the  pages  in  the 
record  of  proceedings  in  this  so-called  trial  at  Capetown. 


284  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vil 


satisfy  His  Father's  honour,  by  bearing  sin's  penalty,  and 
to  appease  a  God  who  wanted  to  be  gracious."     (53.) 

For  tliis  doctrine  the  Dean  found  full  warrant  everywhere. 
The  Greek  verbs  employed  in  the  passages  of  the  New 
Testament  to  which  he  referred  were  sacrificial  terms,  de- 
noting pacifying  influences.  The  prayer  of  the  publican  in 
the  temple  "  indicated  that  God  was  angry,  and  he  asked  that 
He  might  be  appeased."     This 

"  work  of  placation  goes  on  within  the  Godhead,  and  God  is 
not  appeased  by  man  but  by  Himself."     (55.) 

The  conclusion  that 

"  an  actual  transference  of  evil  from  man  to  man's  Redeemer 
was  actually  effected  by  our  Lord's  atoning  sacrifice  " 

is  supported  by  the  assertion  of  Bishop  Butler  that 

"  the  legal  sacrifices  were  allusions  to  the  great  and  final 
atonement  to  be  made  by  the  blood  of  Christ,  and  not  that 
this  was  an  allusion  to  those  "  (57) ; 

and  by  the  proper  preface  for  Easter  Sunday,  which  speaks 
of  Him  "who  by  His  death  hath  destroyed  death"  (59). 
This  language  must  'fl 

"  be  taken  as  affirming  that  we  owe  to  Him  salvation,  and 
by  His  stripes  we  are  healed"  (61).  "I  should  rejoice," 
the  Dean  remarked,  "  if  I  could  say  for  certain  that  he 
believes  Him  to  be  the  Son  of  God." 

But  he  could  not  do  so  by  reason  of  the  "  damning  flaw " 
which  omitted  the  necessity  for  death  which  sin  imposed. 
From  the  Bishop  of  Natal  he  would  appeal  to  St.  Bernard  for 
the  conclusion  that 

"  mere  obedience  could  not  put  away  sin.  Obedience  must 
be  joined  to  death.  Death  is  sin's  penalty  ;  and  in  order 
that  the  penalty  may  be  completely  paid,  the  person  who 


1 363.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  285 


pays   the  penalty  on  man's  nature   must  also  be  the  Son 
of  God."    {61) 

This  being  so,  he  asked  if  the  i^.Ietropolitan  could  allow 
Bishop  Colenso 

"  to  proclaim  that  God  is  all  mercy  and  no  justice,  or  permit 
him,  with  all  the  weight  of  influence  which  his  position 
gives  him,  to  teach  that  God  does  not  feel  angry  because 
of  sin."     (63.) 

On  the  next  count  he  charged  the  Bishop  with  maintaining 
that  all  men  are  justified,  and  that 

"  the  whole  of  mankind  are  recipients  of  God's  grace  in  the 
Gospel "  (69), 

and  he  asked 

"  What  then  is  the  use  of,  being  a  Christian  ?  What  is  the 
difference  between  a  heathen  and  a  Christian  .'  "  (70.)  "  The 
Bishop  teaches  that  men,  as  members  of  the  human  family, 
belong  to  Christ.  He  says  this  again  and  again.  I  main- 
tain that  to  teach  this  is  to  raise  nature  to  the  level  of 
grace.  I  maintain  that  if  men,  as  men,  belong  to  Christ, 
they  do  not  belong  to  Christ  by  faith  ;  they  do  not  come  to 
Christ  in  baptism  ;  they  are  not  saved  by  Christ's  name  ; 
they  do  not  find  safety  within  the  Christian  Church."    iTZ^ 

The  Dean  deprecated,  indeed,  the  dry,  matter-of-fact,  busi- 
ness-like way  in  which  many  speak  of  the  Divine  terms  and 
covenant,  and  so  "  bind  in  chains  of  bondage  the  large  and 
unfettered  love  of  God."     Language,  he  holds, 

"  is  our  only  instrument,  and  we  must  express  in  some  form 
or  other  the  nature  of  the  Divine  dealings  with  us  ;" 

but,  however   this    may    be,    further   argument  was  rendered 
superfluous  by  the  fact  that 

"  the  opinions  of  the  Bishop  amount  to  a  complete  subversion 
of  the  Gospel,  as  commonly  understood  by  all  Christians  " 


286  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vii, 

(74) ;  "  and  it  is  on  these  that  his  teaching  inflicts  a  cruel 
wrong,  for  virtually  he  tells  them,  '  You  are  no  better  off 
than  Jews,  Turks,  and  infidels.  You  are  in  no  more  safe 
condition.' "    (75.) 

This  same  test  furnished  by  the  faith  of  Christendom  con- 
victed the  Bishop  of  the  false  teaching  by  which,  as  the  third 
count  averred,  he  declared  that  men  receive,  each  for  himself 
personally,  in  baptism 

"  a  formal  outward  sign  of  ratification  of  that  adoption  which 
they  had  shared  already,  independently  of  that  sign,  with 
the  whole  race."     (78.) 

Such  a  belief,  whatever  be  its  value,  was  beyond  the  Dean's 
comprehension. 

"  We  do  not  issue  titles  to  gifts  which  all  possess.  We  do 
not  say,  '  Air  is  a  great  blessing,  and  you  may  like  to  know 
that  you  have  a  right  to  use  your  lungs,  and  enjoy  this 
valuable  property.'  Men  do  not  ask  for  proofs  of  universal 
gifts."     (84.) 

As  in  the  previous  counts,  so  in  that  which  related  to  the 
subject  of  eternal  punishment,  the  teaching  of  the  Bishop 
must  be  confronted  with  "  the  doctrine  of  the  Christian 
Church  in  all  ages  "  (87).  It  was  true  that  the  consensus 
on  this  point  was  not  absolute.  Some  great  names  might  be 
cited  in  favour  of  teaching  which  seemed  to  harmonise  very 
much  with  that  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 

"  Gregory  Nazianzen,  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  and  other  teachers 
adopted  the  substance  of  the  Origenistic  theory  "  (89), 

which  was  summed  up  in  the  brief  saying — Nothing  is  im- 
possible with  the  Almighty,  and  there  is  nothing  which 
cannot  be  healed  by  its  Maker.^     But  "  the  Church  vindicated 

^  '^  Nihil  impossibile  Omnipofenti,  et  nihil  insanabile  Fadori  siioT 
See  also  note  ^,  p.  169  supra. 


8  63.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  287 

her  character."     Agreement  with  Origen  in  this  respect  was 
soon  regarded  as  heretical.^     In  fact 

"  no  doctrine  is  more  clearly  revealed  in  Holy  Scriptures.  .  .  . 
The  bliss  of  heaven  and  the  punishment  of  the  lost  must 
stand  or  fall  as  doctrines  together.  We  have  no  better 
ground  for  assurance  in  the  happiness  of  heaven  than  for 
belief  in  the  eternal  miseries  of  hell." 

Of  this  the  Dean  had  not  a  shadow  of  doubt. 

"  For  persons  who  die  in  sin  there  is  no  hope.  Life  is  their 
time  of  probation  ;  and  being  proved  and  tried,  they  are 
found  wanting.  What  then  ?  As  the  tree  falls,  so  it  lies, 
and  so  it  lies  for  ever.  The  Bishop  of  Natal  denies  this. 
.  .  .  Does  he  think  that  hell  is  a  better  school  than  Christ's 
Church  on  earth,  and  that  devils  are  more  apt  and  kind 
instructors  than  those  bright  angels  who  minister  to  man's 
salvation  ?  I  know  not  what  he  thinks.  But  he  tells  us 
God  is  love.  And  so  He  is.  But  there  are  limits  to  for- 
bearance ;  and  patience,  suffering  long,  ceases  at  the  last 
to  bear  with  sin.  Then  comes  justice,  ....  and  the  sinner 
is  driven  down  into  a  pit  which  has  no  bottom,  and  into  the 
lake  which  burns  with  everlasting  fire."     (93.) 

Before  the  same  test  of  the  common  faith  of  Christians,  in 
all  ages,  and  in  all  lands,  falls  all  that  the  Bishop  may  have 
said  on  the  Pentateuch  or  other  records  of  the  Old  Testament. 

"  That  faith  is  for  me  law  and  statute.  There  is  a  common 
law  which  is  inscribed  upon  the  heart  and  the  instincts  of 
Christendom.  There  is  a  statute  law  which,  derived  in  its 
principles  from  Holy  Scripture,  is  written  in  the  Creeds, 
decisions,  and  symbols  of  the  Church."     (98.) 

Nay,   the    argument    may    be    carried     further.       The    Jews 
regarded  the  Old  Testament 

*  This  is  not  true.  Origen  was  never  even  censured,  far  less  was  he 
condemned,  on  account  of  his  teaching  on  the  purpose  of  God's  deahngs 
with  man. 


288  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

^'  with  the  highest  awe  as  a  divine  book,"  and  "  with  well- 
known  care  and  almost  superstitious  scrupulosity"  "  counted 
every  word  and  letter  of  the  whole  volume  and  numbered 
even  its  very  points." 

This  is  for  the  Dean  a  very  astonishing  fact. 

"  Every  feeling  which  pride  suggests,  every  prejudice  which 
opposition  rouses,  called  upon  the  Jewish  people  to  prove 
their  records  worthless."     (loi.) 

On  his  side  he  had  the  plain  teaching  of  Josephus,  that 

^'  '  it  is  a  principle  innate  in  every  Jew  to  regard  these  books 
[and  not  merely  the  spirit  of  these  books]  as  oracles  of  God, 
and  to  cleave  to  them,  yea,  and  to  die  gladly  for  them.'  Is 
it  possible  to  account  for  this  conviction  except  by  the  fact 
that  these  books  are  indeed  divine  ?  "     (102.) 

The  whole  course  is  clear.     St.  Paul 

"  treats  the  Bible  \}  the  Old  Testament]  as  a  divine  book " 
(103).  "He  sees  in  its  facts  spiritual  mysteries."  "The 
critical  Eusebius  holds  it  presumptuous  to  try  to  show  that 
there  is  error  in  them  "   (105).^ 

1  This  is  one  of  those  amazing  statements  in  which  ecclesiastical 
partisans  are  apt  to  indulge.  The  Dean  of  Capetown  does  not  think  it 
worth  while  to  explain  what  Eusebius  meant  by  the  Scriptures,  or  to  give 
the  reference  for  a  questionable  citation.  But  Eusebius  wrote  before  the 
summoning  of  the  Nicene  Council,  and  therefore  his  words  cannot  apply 
to  a  Canon  which  had  not  yet  been  formed ,  and  there  is  abundant 
evidence  in  his  pages  that  there  were  large  differences  of  opinion  in  his 
day  as  to  the  value  and  authority  of  some  of  the  books  afterwards  included 
in  the  Nicene  Canon.  Careful  of  expressing  his  own  opinion,  he  prefers 
simply  to  report  the  judgement  of  others.  Of  the  Epistle  of  St.  James  he 
tells  us  merely  that  it  was  said  to  have  been  written  by  the  Apostle  of  that 
name,  that  it  was  considered  spurious,  that  few  earlier  writers  made  any 
inention  of  it,  or  of  the  Epistle  of  St.  Jude,  but  that,  along  with  the  other 
"  so-called  Catholic  Epistles,"  it  was  published  or  used  in  many  churches  , 
(//.  E.  ii.  23).  The  Second  Epistle  of  St.  Peter  he  describes  as  almost  i 
universally  rejected  (iii.  3).  But  a  far  more  important  example  of  the  method 
applied  to  books  some  of  which  were  afterwards  included  in  the  Canon 
of  the  New  Testament  and  others  excluded,  is  furnished  by  his  remarks 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN. 


Nor  is  the  Dean  at  any  loss  to  show  how  he  himself  thinks, 
and  how  every  one  else  ought  to  think,  on  this  vital  matter  : — 

"  If  I  say  that  the  Bible  is  God's  Word,  I  treat  it  as  a  kind  of 
mystery.  I  recognise  a  Divine  and  a  human  element,  a 
word  of  man  and  a  word  of  God,  so  blended  together,  so 
linked  in  a  mysterious  union,  that,  while  I  cannot  theorise 
about  it  and  state  either  where  the  Divine  ends  and  the 
human  begins,  I  must  yet  allow  that  the  Divinity  runs 
throughout  the  least  syllabic  and  is  never  absent  from  any 
part."    (107.) 

To  this  belief  he  opposes  the  Bishop  of  Natal's 

on  the  book  known  as  the  Apocalypse.  This  book  has  acquired  a  special 
value  for  theologians  of  many  parties  ;  and  the  rejection  of  its  authority 
would  by  them  be  as  fiercely  resented  as  the  rejection  of  the  Gospels 
themselves.  Without  committing  himself  on  either  side,  Eusebius  refers 
his  readers  to  the  Alexandrian  Dionysios,  the  disciple  of  Crigen,  who 
speaks  of  the  book  as  having  been  absolutely  rejected  by  some  previous 
writers,  and  rejected  not  only  as  published  under  a  false  name,  but  as 
being  in  no  sense  an  apocalypse  or  revelation,  being  in  fact  covered  by  a 
veil  of  dense  ignorance.  This,  Dionysios  admits,  is  not  his  own  opinion  ; 
but  his  verdict  has  no  solid  foundation.  He  cannot,  he  says,  reject  the 
book,  because  many  highly  esteem  it,  and  he  regards  himself  as  unable  to 
fathom  the  depths  of  its  meaning.  He  cannot  deny  that  it  was  written 
by  one  named  John,  because  it  claims  to  be  so  written  ;  but  he  will  not 
allow  that  it  was  the  work  of  John  the  son  of  Zebedee.  His  reason  for 
not  admitting  this  is  the  belief  that  the  Apostle  John  was  the  writer  of 
the  fourth  Gospel  and  of  the  Catholic  Epistle  which  bears  his  name  ;  and 
the  whole  tone  and  language  make  the  idea  of  a  cominon  authorship  for 
all  the  three  quite  inadmissible.  Who  or  what  may  have  been  the  John 
of  the  Apocalypse,  he  cannot  say.  But  that  the  writer  who  composed 
the  Catholic  Epistle  of  John  was  the  author  also  of  the  Apocalypse,  is 
with  him  wholly  out  of  the  question.  In  matter,  in  style,  in  thought,  in 
conviction,  they  are  antagonistic  from  beginning  to  end.  They  have 
nothing  in  common  ;  and  that  the  writer  of  the  Catholic  Epistle  could 
fall  into  the  barbarous  jargon  of  the  Apocalypse  is  more  than  he  can 
believe.  When  from  the  Dean  and  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  we  turn  to 
the  Alexandrian  Dionysios,  we  breathe  at  once  a  fresher  and  purer  atmo- 
sphere. He  is  sufficiently,  we  might  think  perhaps  more  than  sufficiently, 
sensitive  to  the  weight  of  authority,  tradition,  and  usage  ;  but  he  has  not 
prostituted  his  powers  of  judgment,  nor  does  he  venture  to  insist,  or 
even  to  hint,  that  others  are  bound  in  duty  to  accept  his  conclusions. 
VOL.   I.  U 


290  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

"  scandalous  opinion  which  makes  the  story  of  the  Pentateuch 
a  chain  of  legends  and  Samuel  an  impostor,  who  lies  in 
strict  accordance  w^ith  those  new  laws  of  critical  morality 
which  puts  to  shame  the  law  of  Moses  "  (i  1 1). 

But  to  this,  i.e,  the  Dean's,  belief  the  Bishop  of  Natal  is, 
nevertheless, 

"  bound  by  his  ordination  vows  and  his  ordination  of 
others"   (112). 

The  Bishop  of  Natal  may  appeal  to  the  Court  of  Arches 
and  to  its  judge,  who  has  ruled  that  the  Deacon's  declaration 
means  only  that  the  Holy  Scriptures  contain  everything  neces- 
sary to  salvation  (Jiealing),  and  that  to  that  extent  they  have 
the  direct  sanction  of  the  Almighty.     But  if  Dr.  Lushington's 

"  dictum  is  law,  it  is  not  theology  ; " 

and  it  cannot 

"  rule  the  faith  of  English  Churches  "  (i  13). 

"We  cannot,"  he  concludes,  "afford  to  yield  an  inch  in  this 
matter  :  we  cannot  allow  this  Book  to  be  despised  as  not 
the  Word  of  God.  The  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God,  and  to 
say  that  God's  Word  is  contained  and  may  be  fovmd  in  it  is 
to  deny  that  it  is  the  Word  of  God."     (115.) 

"  St.  Chrysostom  reverently  says  that  even  in  the  genealogies 
of  Scripture  there  are  mysteries.  It  would  be  too  much  to 
look  for  reverence  like  this  in  one  who  teaches  that  the 
Bible  is  a  common  book  ;  but  surely  the  Bible  is  beyond 
the  reach  of  ridicule."     (117.) 

But  the  Bishop  adopts  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Maurice,  who 
asks  if  there  is  any  difference  between  the  inspiration  which 
we  pray  for  in  the  Collect  for  the  Communion  Service  and 
that  by  which  the  writers  of  the  Sacred  Book  were  moved. 
He  contends  that  these  writers  and  their  books  were  or  are 
fallible.     The  contrary  to  this  assertion  .^ 


I 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  i<^i 

•"  must  be  formally  and  definitely  pronounced  by  the  Church 
of  England,  later  or  sooner,  if  that  Church  is  to  guide 
her  children  and  perform  her  duty  as  a  witness  for  the 
truth"  (119.) 

Whatever  appearance  the  surface  of  things  may  present,  the 
Book  is  absolutely  without  flaw, 

""  Every  charge  of  error  in  history  or  in  any  other  matter  is  a 
libel  against  that  Holy  Book." 

Nothing  less  than  this  conclusion  follows  from  the  words  of 
Christ  Himself,  who 

■"  treats  the  Jewish  Scriptures  as  if  the  least  word  was  full  of 
meaning.  .  .  .  From  the  tense  of  a  verb  ...  he 
deduces  the  distinctive  doctrine  of  the  Christian  faith.  .  .  . 
He  stakes  His  own  veracity  and  credibility  upon  the  truth 
of  the  Old  Testament  in  whole  or  in  part."  ^ 

There  was,  in  fact,  an  inherent  and  eternal  necessity  for 
his  so  doing. 

^  The  term  tnttJi  must  here  mean  either  accuracy  in  matters  of  fact,  or 
tightness  in  moral  and  spiritual  teaching,  or  both.  There  is  the  further 
imphcation  of  an  authority  which  is  not  to  be  impeached.  But  the  fact 
stares  us  in  the  face  that  no  teacher  probably  has  ever  assailed  more 
directly  than  our  Lord  the  authority  of  sacred  books.  He  cites  as  the 
sayings  of  the  men  of  old  time  precepts  and  commands  which  in  their 
places  in  the  Pentateuch  are  set  forth  under  the  direct  sanction  of  God 
Himself;  and  these  sayings,  which  profess  to  come  with  immeasurably 
more  than  Mosaic  authority.  He  sweeps  away  with  the  summary  declara- 
tion, "  1  say  unto  you  that  it  shall  not  be  so."  We  may,  if  we  please, 
carry  back  our  own  belief  to  the  interpretation  of  the  Gospel  records. 
We  may  urge  that  Jesus,  in  so  speaking,  was  using  His  own  divine 
authority:  but  before  the  multitudes  he  appeared  simply  as  a  new  teacher, 
of  whom  they  must  judge  according  to  his  words.  The  insinuation  that 
they  looked  upon  Him  through  the  light  thrown  upon  His  person  by 
the  Nicene  theology  is  thoroughly  disingenuous.  But  the  fact  of  his 
independent  teaching,  teaching  which  utterly  repudiated  the  position  of 
the  popular  interpreters,  was  the  fact  which  throughout  the  discourses 
grouped  together  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  most  impressed  his 
hearers. 

U  2 


292  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

"  If  God  can  be  untrue,  then  the  book  which  is  the  Word  of 
God  can  be  untrue  ;  but  not  otherwise.  A  book  which  has 
error  mingled  in  it,  a  book  which,  rightly  understood,  and 
judged  according  to  those  true  laws  of  criticism  which  apply 
to  its  several  kinds  of  literature,  fails  to  stand  the  test  of 
perfection,  cannot  have  absolute  authority,  cannot  speak  to 
man  as  if  it  was  the  Voice  of  God." 

We  are  surrounded,  in  fact,  by  a  tissue  of  marvels  ;  but 
bewilderment  is  a  reason  only  for  a  more  complete  submission. 
Credo  quia  inipossibile. 

"  Scripture  may  have  its  human  imperfections,  its  seeming 
theological  inconsistencies,  its  difficulties  which  try  faith,  its 
liability  to  alteration  and  corruption  at  the  hands  of  copyists 
and  translators  ;  but  I  cannot  admit  that  error  can  find 
entrance  into  that  which  holy  men  wrote  when  they  were 
borne  along,  like  a  ship  with  sails  outspread,  by  a  Divine 
afflatus,  and  spoke,  not  indeed  without  their  own  particular 
intelligence,  but  by  the  Holy  Ghost."    (122.) 

With  all  its  imperfections,  with  all  its  flaws,  with  all  its 
interpolations,  with  all  its  corruptions,  it  is  uncorrupt, 
flawless,  and  perfect.  If  any  further  proof  were  wanting 
for  the  historical  accuracy  of  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament, 
it  is  supplied  by  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

"  The  pra}'cr  in  the  Baptismal  Service  assumes  the  reality  of 
the  flood  and  the  passage  of  the  Red  Sea.  The  prayer  for 
fair  weather  likewise  supposes  that  the  story  of  the  flood 
is  true.  The  prayer  for  times  of  sickness  is  based  on  the 
historic  credibility  of  the  story  of  the  plague  in  the  wilder- 
ness. The  Communion  Service  and  the  Catechism  accept 
the  Mosaic  history  as  respects  the  giving  of  the  Law  from 
Sinai."     (129.) 

But,  more  particularly, 

"  the  exhortation  in  the  Communion  Service  treats  those  who 

hinder   or   slander  God's  Word  as  unfit  to  come   to   the 

•    Lord's  table  ; " 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  293 


and   by  his  criticisms  of  the  Pentateuch  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
has  hindered  and  slandered  God's  Word  as  much 
"  as  any  living  man,  or  any  man  in  modern  times." 

Thus  slandering  God's  Word,  he  slandered  also  the  Divine 
Master,  who 

"took  the  Mosaic  history  under  his  protecting  wing,  and 
spoke  of  Moses  as  the  author  of  those  writings  which  were 
usually  ascribed  to  him  by  the  Jewish  people"  (130). 

To  deny  this, 

*'  if  Christ  be  God,  is  to  charge  God  with  error.  Either  the  faith 
of  the  Church  in  the  Godhead  of  Christ  is  a  delusion  ;  or  the 
charge  of  the  Bishop  substantially  amounts  to  this.  .  .  . 
I  pray  God,  with  all  my  heart  I  pray  it,  lay  not  this  sin 
to  his  charge,"    (137.) 

Such  is  the  general  outline  of  the  Dean's  long  harangue. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  with  the  same  closeness  the 
pleadings  of  his  fellow-accusers.  The  agreement  between 
them  is  so  complete  that  the  reader  may  well  wonder  how 
independent  thinkers  could  continue  to  preserve  such  harmony 
in  the  midst  of  the  multitude  of  propositions  each  of  which 
they  put  forth  as  articles  of  saving  faith.  All  spoke  with 
equal  vehemence,  and  all  were  equally  unsparing  in  their 
denunciation.  The  Archdeacon  of  Grahamstown  was  greatly 
distressed  by 

"the  very  painful  fact  .  .  .  that  the  other  da}-,  at  one  of  our 
largest  public  schools,  where  the  Bishop  had  been  once  a 
master,  the  boys,  on  his  appearing  among  them  on  their 
great  speech-day,  hailed  him  with  a  general  and  public 
acclamation  of  jo)-.^  No  doubt  these  poor  boys  thought 
that  the  Bishop  was  what  he  tries  to  represent  himself  as 
being  in  the  Third  Part  of  his  book  on  the  Pentateuch,  i.e. 
a  great  Reformer,  like  Ridlc}'  and  Latimer  of  old.    And  could 

1  See  p.  241. 


294  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

not  the  united  voices  of  the  English  Bishops  warn  them  ? 
It  must  then  be  left  to  the  sentence  pronounced  by  your 
Lordship  to  assure  them  that  he  whom  they  have  confounded 
with  those  great  and  wise  master-builders  in  our  Zion  is  in 
truth  but  an  arch-destroyer  of  the  common  faith."    (149.) 

The  Archdeacon  of  George  went  over  the  same  ground.  It 
was  his  belief  that,  if  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had  been  present,  he 
would  have  contended 

"that  the  structure  and  cornposition  of  the  Bible  clearly 
evince  the  presence  of  a  human  element.  And  to  this,"  the 
Archdeacon  adds,  "we  should,  of  course,  assent,  fully 
allowing  that  the  Holy  Scriptures  were  penned  by  men 
of  like  minds  and  passions  with  ourselves,  and  that  they 
were  not  supernaturally  reduced  to  the  condition  of  mere 
machines,  in  order  that  they  might  be  thereby  qualified  to 
write  under  Divine  dictation.  But,  '  this  being  conceded,' 
the  Bishop  would  probably  argue,  '  you  also  concede  the 
fallibility  of  the  work  so  written,  for  no  man  can  have 
perfect  knowledge  upon  any  subject ;  and  all  men  are 
liable  to  make  mistakes  in  communicating  even  what  they 
know  best.'  The  fallacy  here  lies  in  confounding  human 
nature,  as  human  nature — human  nature  in  its  essentials, 
with  what  is  purely  accidental  to  it.  If  it  be  asserted  that 
the  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  specially  exerted  for  a  special 
purpose,  could  not  preserve  men  from  error  in  recording 
facts  or  in  delivering  doctrine,  that,  I  contend,  is  to  beg  the 
whole  question.  My  argument  is  that,  because  the  inspired 
penmen  were  living  men  like  ourselves,  what  they  wrote  does 
not,  therefore,  contain  errors,  for  that  human  nature,  although 
it  does  imply  limitedness,  does  not  properly  imply  either 
sinfulness  or  actual  error ;  and  that  the  influence  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  being  specially  directed  to  that  end,  might, 
without  any  interference  with  the  proper  humanity  of  the 
person  influenced,  preserve  him  effectually  from  error  to  the 
fullest  extent  to  which  we  can  claim  infallibility  for  God's 
A\"orcl  written.     Obviousl}^,  the  proof  of  all  others  which  I 


1 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  295 

would  prefer  to  adduce  in  support  of  this  argument  is  the 
perfect  humanity  of  our  Redeemer.  For  in  His  Divine 
Person  we  behold  human  nature,  in  all  its  naturalness,  in 
perfect  union  with  the  Godhead."     (211.) 

The  question  of  earthly  fact  and  of  the  accuracy  of  records 
purporting  to  relate  those  facts  is  thus  carried  into  regions  of 
the  most  abstruse  theology  ;  and  it  becomes  impossible  to 
examine  the  real  or  seeming  discrepancies  between  the  his- 
tories of  the  books  of  Kings  as  compared  with  those  in  the 
books  of  Chronicles  without  reference  to  the  question 

"  how  in  one  and  the  self-same  person  a  finite  or  limited 
nature  such  as  ours  could  be  united  with  a  nature  that  must 
be  limitless  "  (223). 

But  because  it  was  so  united,  it  must  have  been  impossible 

"  for  our  Lord  to  have  subjected  Himself  to  misleading  and 
mischievous  error  "  (225). 

The  ascription  of  the  Pentateuch  to  any  writer  but  Moses 
is  a  misleading  and  mischievous  error  :  therefore,  since  our 
Lord  affirmed  Moses  to  be  the  writer  of  the  Pentateuch,  the 
denial  of  this  conclusion  becomes  blasphemy. 

So  ended  what  was  called  the  case  for  the  prosecution 
There  remained  the  defence  (if  any  should  be  offered)  and  the 
judgement.  But  before  we  come  to  the  latter,  some  facts  force 
themselves  upon  our  notice  with  glaring  distinctness.  The 
tribunal  before  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was  summoned  to 
appear  (whatever  ma}-  have  been  its  authority,  and  whence- 
socver  derived),  consisted  wholly  of  ecclesiastics,  without  a 
single  legal  assessor.  The  accusers  scarcely  made  profession 
of  anything  approaching  to  judicial  impartiality.  The}' 
admitted  that,  in  dealing  with  man}-  or  most  of  the  charges, 
their  hearts  were  stirred  with  indignation.  They  could  see 
in  the  defendant,  it  would  seem,  no  redeeming  points  at  all. 
He    was    nothing    but    a    hindercr   and    slanderer    of    God's 


296  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

Word  :  he  was  arrogant,  blind,  presumptuous  :  he  was  an 
arch-destroyer  of  the  common  faith  of  Christendom.  But  it 
was  not  the  common  faith  of  Christendom  which  was  now 
in  question.  The  real  point  at  issue  was  whether  certain 
propositions  might  or  might  not  be  maintained  by  clergymen 
of  the  Church  of  England,  and  maintained  as  lawfully  by 
clergymen  of  that  Church  in  South  Africa  as  by  the  same  or 
other  clergymen  in  the  mother  country  itself.  The  method 
to  be  followed  in  this  inquiry  could,  lawfully,  be  only  the 
method  which  would  have  to  be  observed  in  England  ;  and 
this  method  must  be  based  on  certain  well-defined  and  perfectly 
intelligible  conditions.  The  guilt  or  innocence  of  the  accused 
must  be  proved  by  reference  not  to  the  writings  of  the  Old 
or  the  New  Testaments,  not  to  the  utterances  of  early 
Christian  Fathers  or  early  Christian  historians,  not  to  the 
saints  of  any  age  or  any  country,  not  to  a  real  or  supposed 
consensus  of  Christendom  on  the  matters  in  debate,  not  even 
to  convictions  avowed  and  put  forth  by  the  most  learned  or 
the  most  devout  theologians  of  the  English  Church  itself,  but 
solely  to  the  Articles  and  formularies  of  that  Church. 

But  here,  by  a  common  consent,  the  accusers  and  the  judge 

with  his  assessors  cast  all  such  limitations   to  the  winds.     If 

these  were  to  be  observed,  justice,  they  urged,  could  not  be 

done.     The  "  Church  of  South  Africa  "  was  in  union  and  full 

communion  with  the  Church  of  England  ;  but  it  was  in  union 

also  with  the  Church  Catholic,  a  union  repudiated  indeed  with 

contempt    and    anathema   by   the   vastly    larger    portion    of 

Christendom,  but  none  the  less  real  (in  their  judgement)  on 

^  this   account.     By  the  faith,  the  doctrine,  the  discipline,  the 

canons  of  this  Catholic  Church  must  the  accused  be  tested  ; 

and  in  this  investigation  the  utterances  of  a  Bernard  and  an 

Anselm  must  be  held  to  carry  a  weight  scarcely  less  than  the 

Articles  of  Faith  or  the  language  of  the  Prayer  Book  of  the 

Church  of  England.      This  wide  ranre  was  claimed  from  first 


1863-  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  297 

to  last ;  and  underneath  this  claim  lay  the  suppressed  premiss 
that  the  true  interpretation  of  the  Catholic  faith  and  the 
Catholic  canons  must  be  found  in  the  judgement  of  the 
Metropolitan  of  Southern  Africa.  This  interpretation,  in- 
volving an  almost  infinite  number  of  propositions,  and,  as  it 
might  seem  to  the  eyes  of  the  profane,  a  vast  mass  of  mere 
speculation  and  opinion,  was  to  be  taken  as  the  law  of  the 
Church,  and  was  to  become  binding  on  the  consciences  of  all 
English  Churchmen.  The  assurance  with  which  the  self-styled 
judge,  the  assessors,  and  the  accusers  in  this  case  pile  opinion 
on  opinion,  inference  on  inference,  dogma  upon  dogma,  with- 
out the  faintest  misgiving  that  these  conclusions  may  not  in 
every  instance  commend  themselves  even  to  the  whole  body  of 
the  orthodox,  is  amazing  indeed.  If  they  had  been  pleading  not 
for  the  condemnation  of  one  from  whom  they  differed,  but  for 
their  right  to  maintain  these  opinions  for  themselves  without 
forfeiting  their  position  as  English  Churchmen,  their  contention 
would  have  been  intelligible  ;  but  it  would  also  have  been 
superfluous.  There  was  no  desire  on  the  part  of  any  to  shut 
them  out,  although  in  reference  to  every  one  of  the  subjects 
with  which  they  professed  to  deal  they  had  chosen  to  adopt 
the  extremest  and  the  most  extravagant  views.  But  the 
case  was  wholly  altered  when  these  views  were  put  forward 
for  the  purpose  of  coercing  the  religious  thought  of  England, 
and  driving  it  into  a  channel  scooped  out  only  by  them- 
selves ;  and  still  more  so,  when  it  became  plain  that  of 
these  interpretations  some  were  incorrect,  some  absurd,  and 
many,  if  true,  not  to  the  point. 

Looking  at  matters  even  from  their  own  standing-ground, 
it  seems  strange  that  they  could  regard  with  so  much  com- 
placency the  fabric  which  they  were  so  sedulously  raising 
with  so  little  heed  to  its  foundations.  They  spoke  much  of 
the  Divine  character  of  the  Scriptures  and  of  the  duty  of  the 
Church  as  their  interpreter.     The  result,  they  insisted,  must 


298  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vik 

be  harmonious  ;  but  if  a  large  number  of  statements  seem- 
ingly not  all  self-consistent  were  to  be  so  interpreted  as  to 
yield  a  general  agreement,  some  statements  must  be  held  to 
be  paramount.  If  the  righteous  God  was  to  be  regarded  as 
utterly  hating  and  waging  war  upon  all  sin,  if  His  will  is  to 
be  looked  upon  as  unchanging,  and  His  power  as  simply  the 
result  of  His  will,  then  it  becomes  impossible  to  think  of 
Him  as  slackening  in  this  war,  still  less  to  conceive  of  Him  as 
leaving  any  portion  of  His  wide  creation  as  a  region  in  which 
His  will  and  His  law  should  never  be  felt.  Holding  redemp- 
tion to  be,  and  denying  salvation  to  be,  universal,  they  never 
pause  to  think  what  may  be  involved  in  any  theories  of  partial 
salvation.  It  is  no  light  thing  to  ascribe  to  Him,  whose 
hatred  of  sin  and  whose  purpose  of  conquering  and  destroying 
it  are  admitted  to  be  as  eternal  as  Himself,  a  compromise  with 
evil.  Yet  if  any  are  suffered  to  remain  with  the  evil  in  them 
thus  unconquered,  and  under  conditions  which  preclude  all 
further  purpose  of  conquering  it,  there  is  this  compromise. 

The  dislike  which  the  Dean  of  Capetown  and  his  fellow- 
accusers  felt  for  the  critical  method  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
and  his  conclusions  may  be  easily  understood  and  readily 
forgiven  ;  but  the  vehemence  of  their  indignation  is  no  excuse 
for  untruth.  It  was  false  to  speak  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  as 
representing  God  to  be  indifferent  to  evil  (46).  It  was 
false  to  describe  him  as  teaching,  or  as  desiring  to  teach, 
or  as  dreaming  of  teaching,  that  God  does  not  feel  anger 
because  of  sin  (65).  It  was  false  to  impute  to  him  the 
opinion  that  Christians  were  no  better  off  than  Jews,  Turks, 
or  infidels.  But,  further,  their  accusing  harangues  bristle  with 
undefined  terms.  Definitions  are  always  useful ;  but  they 
may  perhaps  be  dispensed  with  so  long  as  debate  does  not 
imply  condemnation,  loss,  and  ruin  to  one  of  the  parties  con- 
cerned. When  the  investigation  involves  the  risk  of  penal 
consequences,  the  meaning  of  ever}-  term  emplo}-ed  should  be 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  299 

very  clearl\-  drawn  out.  It  ma)',  or  may  not,  be  allowable  to 
use  language  which  may  seem  unmeaning  or  nonsensical :  but 
such  language  must  not  be  applied  as  a  test  of  the  truth  or 
falsehood  of  opinions  held  by  others.  The  Dean  of  Capetown 
speaks  much  of  the  satisfaction,  the  sufferings,  and  the  death 
of  Christ.  But  what  this  sacrifice,  this  satisfaction,  this  death 
may  be,  he  never  pauses  to  explain.  He  may  appeal  to 
Bishop  Butler ;  but  of  all  writers  in  the  Church  of  England 
who  have  been  sinners  especiall}-  in  the  use  of  undefined 
terms,  Butler  is  among  the  foremost,  and  is  perhaps  the  most 
conspicuous.  The  Dean  cannot  disclaim  the  duty  of  defini- 
tion on  the  ground  that  the  terms  used  have  the  same  con- 
notation everywhere,  for  this  is  not  the  case.  Not  a  few  of 
the  terms  employed  by  him  have  been  used  by  writers  in  the 
Church  of  England  in  diametrically  contradictory  senses.  To 
the  word  salvation,  for  instance,  Dr.  Pusey  and  Mr.  Maurice 
attached  two  entirel}-  different  conceptions.  With  the  former 
it  was  a  rescue  from  a  wrath  ready  to  devour,  a  deliverance 
from  an  angry  Judge  by  One  who  interposes  the  merits  of  His 
sufferings  on  man's  behalf  With  the  other  it  is  the  process 
of  deliverance  from  sin  wrought  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  who  is 
working  always,  everywhere,  and  in  all  for  good.  Sacrifice 
and  satisfaction  are  words  as  much,  if  not  even  more,  abused. 
Sacrifice  is  the  making  of  a  thing  hol\-,  or  that  thing  which  is 
made  sacred  or  holy.  But  nothing  can  be  made  holy  except 
that  which  has  a  capacity  for  holiness  or  goodness  ;  and  none 
who  has  not  in  himself  this  capacity  can  make  an)'thing  hoi}-. 
The  Jewish  sacrifices  were  thus  sacrifices  in  name  onl)-.  The 
bod}^  of  the  bull  or  the  goat  could  not  be  sacrificed  really, 
because  it  had  no  capacity  for  holiness  or  goodness.  The 
beast  might  be  killed,  and  that  was  all.  The  true  sacrifice 
is  the  sanctification  of  the  will  ;  and  if  God  be  infinitely 
righteous,  loving,  and  good,  it  follows  that  he  cannot  possibl}- 
be  satisfied  except  with  a  righteousness,  goodness,  and  love 


300  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

corresponding  absolutely  with  His  own.  The  perfect  and 
satisfying  sacrifice  involves  death,  indeed  ;  but  it  is  not  that 
which  we  speak  of  as  the  death  of  the  body :  still  less  is  it  the 
death  which  is  the  penalty  or  wages  of  sin,  the  death  of  wil- 
fulness, selfishness,  and  disobedience,  the  death  from  which  we 
pray  to  be  raised  to  the  life  of  righteousness.  It  is  (the 
necessity  of  the  case  compels  the  repetition  ^)  the  death  to  sin, 
the  absolute  rejection  of  all  sin,  the  death  which,  in  strictness 
and  fulness,  only  One  who  is  faultless  and  sinless  can  die.  To 
this  death  and  this  life  the  whole  Eucharistic  terminology  may 
be  most  truly  and  strictly  applied.  It  is  the  full,  perfect,  suffi- 
cient sacrifice,  oblation,  and  satisfaction  ;  and  He  who  offers  it 
is  "Himself  the  Victim,  and  Himself  the  Priest."  The  victim 
denotes  the  absolute  submission  of  the  will  to  the  law  of 
truth,  of  righteousness,  and  of  love  :  the  Priest  is  the  Eternal 
Son  who  alone  has  offered  and  offers  this  absolute,  un- 
wavering, unswerving  obedience  to  the  law  of  truth  and 
righteousness. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  carry  this  train  of  thought  further  ;  but 
from  what  has  been  said  thus  much  at  least  is  clear.  We 
have  here  two,  or  three,  or  more  terms — satisfaction,  sacrifice, 
death,  resurrection,  life — the  meaning  of  which  has  been 
drawn  out  with  unmistakable  clearness,  and  it  is  obvious  that, 
if  the  definition  here  given  be  accepted,  every  other  term  used 
indefinitel}-,  and,  therefore,  more  or  less  misapprehended,  by 
the  Dean  of  Capetown  and  his  fellow-accusers,  may  have  its 
meaning  brought  out  with  equal  clearness.  As  it  is,  we  hear 
of  redemption,  atonement,  justification,  and  many  other  terms, 
without  being  able  to  determine  what  precise  conceptions 
they  attach  to  them  ;  and  perhaps  we  may  be  tempted  to 
think  that  the  conceptions  attached  to  them  are  not  precise 
at  all.  In  truth,  in  the  Dean's  expositions  we  find  confusion 
and  indistinctness  everywhere.  The  analogy  drawn  from 
1  See  p.  141  ct  seq.,  and  167. 


1 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  301 

the  universal  gift  of  air  ^  (84)  is,  like  many  other  supposed 
cases  of  analogy,  fallacious.  He  would  allow  that  the  promise 
of  forgiveness  of  sin  on  true  repentance  is  universal  and 
unfailing,  as  universal  in  the  spiritual  world  as  the  air  which 
sustains  our  mortal  bodies.  But  if  so,  why  in  the  daily  office 
of  the  Church  of  England  is  this  announcement  made  from 
generation  to  generation  .'  Repetition  is  not  supposed  to 
render  it  unnecessary  ;  and  the  experience  of  most  people 
will  convince  them  that  it  is  a  lesson  w  hich  we  are  sadly  slow 
and  long  in  learning.  It  is,  therefore,  no  argument  against 
the  Bishop  of  Natal's  views  of  the  sacrament  of  baptism  to 
say  that,  on  his  theory,  it  becomes  a  superfluous  ceremony. 
The  charge  is  altogether  untrue.  But  had  the  Dean  of  Cape- 
town been  pleading  simply  for  freedom  for  his  own  views,  no 
further  reply  would  have  been  needed.  There  is  enough, 
perhaps,  in  the  language  of  the  Baptismal  Office  in  the  Prayer 
Book  to  justify  his  thcor)^  :  there  is  much  more  to  justif}^  the 
view  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  which  is  also  that  of  Mr.  Maurice 
The  latter  declared 

"  that  Dr.  Puscy  regarded  '  Baptismal  Regeneration  '  as  a 
change  of  nature,  while  he  [Mr.  Maurice]  regarded  it 
as  the  coming  out  of  the  infant  under  the  first  influence 
of  a  light  that  had  alwa}-s  been  shining  for  it  and  all  the 
world."  2 

The  condemnation  of  the  l^ishop  of  Natal  would  carry  with 
it  the  condemnation  of  Mr,  Maurice  and,  perhaps,  of  half  the 
clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  and  this  is  a  result  which 
may  be  forced  upon  us  by  the  recklessness  of  those  who,  if  1 
they  had  their  wa\-,  would  leave  no  room  for  any  part}-  but 
their  own.  ""^ 

On    the    question    of    the    punishment    of    sin     here    and 

See  p.  286.  -  Life  of  F.  D.  Maurice,  \.  214.     See  also  ii.  242. 


302  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

hereafter  enough  has  been  said  already.^  We  may  pass  on 
to  the  surprising  assertions  by  which  the  Dean  of  Capetown 
and  his  associates  thought  to  uphold  or  strengthen  the  autho- 
rity of  the  Bible.  It  is  not  easy  to  see  what  the  awe  which 
the  Dean  describes  the  Jews  as  feehng  for  the  letter  of  their 
Scriptures  can  prove  beyond  the  existence  of  an  abject  super- 
stition :  but  it  must  be  noted  that  even  this  superstition  is  one 
of  very  late  growth.  The  people  at  large  were  certainly 
guiltless  of  it  in  the  days  of  Manasseh  and  other  idolatrous 
kings  and  not  much  influenced  by  it  in  the  time  even  of  such 
kings  as  Hezekiah  and  Josiah.  But,  indeed,  it  can  scarcely 
be  supposed  that  the  Dean  of  Capetown  meant  his  views  on 
this  subject  to  be  intelligible.  The  writers  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  men,  not  machines  ;  they  were,  therefore,  liable  to 
make  mistakes,  but  the  influence  of  the  Divine  inspiration 
prevented  them  from  making  any.  There  is  in  Scripture  a 
Divine  and  human  element  ;  but  the  Divinity  runs  throughout 
the  least  syllable  (loS).^ 

This  reasoning  may  possibly  be  ingenious  :  it  is  certainly 
not  novel.  There  is  scarcely  a  single  argument  urged  here 
on  behalf  of  the  Jewish  or  Christian  Bible  which  has  not  been 
urged  on  behalf  of  the  Rig  Veda  and  other  sacred  books  of 
the  East,  and  the  aggregate  of  believers  in  the  Rig  Veda  form 
a  body  more  numerous,  it  may  be,  than  the  whole  population 
of  western  Christendom.  But  the  least  creditable  portion  of 
these  accusing  arguments  is  that  which  is  directed  against 
the  Bishop  for  slandering  the  Divine  Word  and  with  it  his 
Divine  Master  (p.  137).  There  is  something  monstrous  in 
the  alternatives  to  which  the  Dean  and  his  associates  seek  to 
compel  the  great  body  of  English  Churchmen.  Either  the 
Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  are  absolutely  free 
from  any  the  least  admixture  of  error,  or  God  Himself  is 

^  See  p.  147  et  seq.  ^  See  p.  289. 


I 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  303 

false.  We  have  heard  before  of  this  "  great  dilemma,"  by 
which  they  who  hesitate  to  use  the  language  of  the  Athanasian 
formula  are  told  that  logically  they  are  bound  to  look  upon 
Jesus  Christ  as  the  basest  and  meanest  and  the  most  bare- 
faced of  all  cheats  and  impostors.  ^  But  the  very  vehemence 
and  extravagance  of  their  language  proves  the  extreme 
importance  of  the  subject  in  their  eyes.  All  that  they  say 
about  it  has  the  ring  of  genuine  alarm  ;  but  the}'  merely  work 
out  at  greater  length  and  with  greater  recklessness  of  assertion 
the  positions  laid  down  by  a  Committee  appointed  in  1863 
by  the  Convocation  of  the  Province  of  Canterbury  to  examine 
and  report  upon  the  Bishop  of  Natal's  criticism  on  the 
Pentateuch, 

The  three  charges  brought  by  this  Committee  against  the 
Bishop  cover  the  whole  ground  occupied  by  the  Dean  of 
Capetown  and  his  fellow-accusers,  and  these  charges  were 
summarily  dealt  with  by  Dr.  Thirlwall,  Bishop  of  St.  David's, 
in  the  same  year  with  the  Capetown  trial.  The  Charge  in 
which  he  demolishes  the  work  of  the  Committee  is  a  complete 
and  unanswerable  refutation  of  Bishop  Gray  and  his  suppor- 
ters ;  but  his  words  deserve  to  be  remembered  everywhere  as 
among  the  noblest  and  wisest  ever  spoken  on  behalf  of  the 
rightful  freedom  of  all  members,  clerical  or  lay,  of  the  Church 
of  England. 

Addressing  himself  first  to  the  general  question  of  Biblical 
research  and  criticism.  Dr.  Thirlwall  determines  that  the  field 
has  been  left  open  and  free  by  the  Church  of  England. 

"  The  Church,"  he  maintains,  "  has  not  attempted  to  fence  the 
study  of  the  Scripture,  either  for  clergy  or  laity,  with  any 
restriction  as  to  the  subject  of  inquiry,  but  has  rather  taught 
them  to  consider  every  kind  of  information  which  throws 
light  on  any  part  of  the  Sacred  Volume  as  precious  either 

1   The  Great  Dilemma,  Rev.  H.  B.  Ottley. 


304  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vii 

for  present  or  possible  use If  the  inquiry  is   to  be 

free,  it  is  impossible  consistently  to  prescribe  its  results." 

Passing  on  to  the  resolution  by  which  the  Convocation  of 
Canterbury  condemned  the  Bishop  of  Natal's  criticisms  on 
the  Pentateuch,  he  asserts  that  it 

"  assumes  a  paternal  authority  which  rather  suits  an  earlier 
period  in  the  education  of  the  world  ;  and  it  presupposes  a 
childlike  docility  and  obedience,  in  those  over  whom  it  is 
exercised,  which  are  now  very  rarely  to  be  found.  It  also 
suggests  the  question,  what  practical  purpose  it  was  designed 
to  answer.  Two  were  indicated  in  the  Committee's  Report : 
'  the  effectual  vindication  of  the  truth  of  God's  Word  before 
men,'  and  '  the  warning  and  comfort  of  Christ's  people.' 
But  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  either  of  these  objects  could 
be  attained  by  a  declaration  that  '  the  book  involves  errors 
of  the  grossest  and  most  dangerous  character.'  Both  seem 
to  require  that  the  censure  should  have  pointed  out  the 
errors  involved,  or  have  stated  the  doctrine  which  the  book 
had  at  least  indirectly  impugned,  so  as  to  make  it  clear 
that  the  alleged  errors  affected  not  merely  prevalent 
opinions,  but  truths  universally  recognised  as  part  of  the 
Church's  Creed." 

The  "  Church "  here  is  not  the  Catholic  Christendom  to 
which  the  Dean  of  Capetown  appeals  ;  it  is,  strictly,  the 
society  to  which  the  writer  of  the  book  under  examination 
immediately  belongs.  In  Bishop  Thirlwall's  view,  the  Com- 
mittee at  once  overstepped  the  proper  limits  of  synodical 
action  in  the  cognisance  of  books. 

"  They  were  appointed  to  examine  the  Parts  which  had 
appeared  of  the  Bishop's  work,  and  to  report  whether 
any,  and  if  any  what,  opinions,  heretical  or  erroneous  in 
doctrine,  were  contained  in  it.  They  extracted  three  pro- 
positions, which  they  have  characterised  as  we  have  seen. 
...   It   may  seem,  indeed,  as   if  the   Committee,  in   their 


i 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  305 

mode  of  dealing  with  the  first  of  these  propositions  which 
they  cite  or  extract  for  censure,  had  shown  that  they  were 
aware  of  the  precise  nature  of  the  function  they  had  to 
perform,  and  meant  to  confine  themselves  to  it.  That 
proposition  is  [the  one  which  excited  such  strong  indig- 
nation in  the  Bishop  of  Natal's  accusers  at  Capetown], '  The 
Bible  is  not  itself  God's  Word.'  The  author  himself  imme- 
diately adds,  '  But  assuredly  God's  Word  will  be  heard  in 
the  Bible  by  all  who  will  humbly  and  devoutly  listen  for 
it.'  Of  this  qualification  the  Committee,  in  their  remarks 
on  the  proposition,  take  no  notice  whatever.  But  they  first 
observe  that  the  proposition,  as  they  cite  it,  '  is  contrary  to 
the  faith  of  the  universal  Church,  which  has  always  taught 
that  Holy  Scripture  is  given  by  inspiration  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.'  They  seem  to  have  overlooked  that  this  statement, 
however  true,  was  irrelevant  ;  but  they  then  proceed  to 
refer  to  the  Articles  and  formularies  of  our  own  Church, 
which  are,  indeed,  the  only  authority  binding  on  her 
ministers.  But,  unfortunately,  not  one  of  the  passages  to 
which  they  refer  applies  to  the  proposition  condemned. 
Many,  indeed,  among  them  do  clearly  describe  the  Bible  as 
the  Word  of  God  ;  but  not  one  affirms  that  '  the  Bible  is 
itself  God's  Word.'  .  .  .  No  doubt  the  expression  indicated 
that  the  author  (Bishop  Colenso)  made  a  distinction  between 
the  Bible  and  the  Word  of  God,  and  considered  the  two 
terms  as  not  precisely  equivalent  or  absolutely  interchange- 
able  And  there   is  certainly  high   authority  for  the 

distinction.  Among  the  numerous  passages  of  the  New 
Testament  in  which  the  phrase  the  '  Word  of  God'  occurs, 
there  is  not  one  in  which  it  signifies  the  Bible,  or  in  which 
that  word  could  be  substituted  for  it  without  manifest  ab- 
surdity. But  even  in  our  Articles  and  formularies  there  are 
several  in  which  the  two  terms  do  not  seem  to  be  treated  as 
synonymous.  ...  If  the  Word  of  God  is  to  be  found  no- 
where but  in  Holy  Writ,  not  only  would  no  other  Christian 
literature  be  properly  called  sacred,  but  the  Bible  itself  would 
be  degraded  to  a  dead  and  barren  letter,  and  would  not  be 
a  living  spring  of  Divine  Truth.  On  the  whole,  the  Report 
VOL.  I.  X 


3o6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vii 

first  attaches  an  arbitrary  meaning  to  an  ambiguous  ex- 
pression, and  then  charges  it  with  contradicting  authorities 
which  are  either  wholly  silent  upon  it  or  seem  to  countenance 
or  warrant  it.  .  ,  . 

"  But  in  their  treatment  of  the  next  proposition  [relating  to 
the  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch],  the  Committee  seem 
almost  entirely  to  have  lost  sight  of  the  principle  which, 
although  misapplied,  appeared  to  guide  them  in  their 
examination  of  the  first.  For,  with  a  single  insignificant 
exception,  they  confront  it  not  with  our  Articles  and 
formularies  but  with  passages  of  Scripture.  Quotations 
from  Scripture  may  add  great  weight  to  a  theological 
argument :  they  are  essential  for  the  establishment  of  any 
doctrine  of  a  Church  which  professes  to  ground  its  teaching 
on  Scripture  ;  but  they  are  entirely  out  of  place,  where  the 
question  is,  not  whether  a  doctrine  is  true  or  false,  but 
whether  it  is  the  do.ctrine  of  the  Church  of  England.  .  .  . 
This  is  no  legal  refinement,  but  a  plain  dictate  of  common- 
sense  ;  and  it  does  not  at  all  depend  on  the  composition  of 
the  tribunal  before  which  such  questions  are  tried,  so  as  to 
to  be  less  applicable  if  the  court  consisted  entirely  of 
ecclesiastics.  .  .  . 

"  When  I  look  at  the  Scriptural  arguments  adduced  in  the 
Report  against  the  second  proposition  extracted  for  con- 
demnation, they  do  not  seem  to  me  of  such  a  quality  as  to 
deserve  to  form  an  exception,  if  any  could  be  admitted,  to 
the  rule  which  would  exclude  them  from  such  an  investiga- 
tion. .  .  .  The  Committee  observe  that  '  Moses  is  spoken  of 
by  our  Blessed  Lord  in  the  Gospel  as  the  writer  of  the 
Pentateuch.'  I  suspect  that  even  a  layman,  little  ac- 
quainted with  the  manifold  aspects  of  the  question  and  the 
almost  infinite  number  of  surmises  which  have  been  or  may 
be  formed  concerning  it,  would  be  somewhat  disappointed, 
when  he  found  that  the  proof  of  this  statement  consists  of 
three  passages  in  which  our  Lord  speaks  of '  Moses  and  the 
prophets,'  of  the  '  law  of  Moses,'  and  of  '  writings  of  Moses.' 
It  is  true  that  it  would  not  be  a  fatal  objection  to  the 
argument,  that  the  word  '  Pentateuch  '  does  not  occur  in 


1 


1863.  777^  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  307 

the  Bible.  It  might  have  been  so  described  as  to  connect 
every  part  of  its  contents  with  the  hand  of  Moses  as 
distinctly  as  if  the  observation  of  the  Committee  had  been 
literally  true.  But,  in  fact,  this  is  not  the  case  ;  and  still 
less  is  any  such  distinct  appropriation  to  be  found  in  an}' 
of  the  passages  cited  by  the  Committee  in  support  of  their 
assertion  that  '  Moses  is  recognised  as  the  writer  of  the 
Pentateuch  in  other  passages  of  Holy  Scripture.'  ^  They  are 
neither  more  nor  less  conclusive  than  the  language  of  the 


'  This  comparatively  sober  and  passionless  statement  becomes,  as  we 
have    seen,   in    the   mouth    of  the    Dean    of   Capetown  an    appeal    to 
the  authority  of  our  Lord  as  taking  the  authorship  of  the   Pentateuch 
under   His   protecting  wing,  and  staking   His  own  veracity   and  credi- 
bility on  the  accuracy  of  this  fact  (see  p.  293).    It  is  strange  that  the  Dean 
should  have  been  unable  to  see,  not  the  falsehood,  but  the  astounding 
absurdity   of  his   position.     According   to    the    Gospel    narratives,  our 
Lord  was  speaking  to  the  common  folk  gathered  round  Him  on  matters 
relating  not  to  questions  of  literary  history  but  to  their  spiritual  life.     He 
was  speaking  to  people  who    were   accustomed  to  a  certain  division  of 
their  Scriptures,  speaking  of  them   as    the  Law,  the  Law  of  Moses,  the 
Prophets  ;  and  he  wished  to  bring  home  to  them  in  each  case  certain 
moral  and  spiritual  lessons.      Let  us   suppose  for    a  moment  that  with 
Him  historical  accuracy  as  to  dates   or   place  of  the  composition  of  a 
book  or  the  names  of  the  writers  was  a  matter  of  even  small  import- 
ance  (and  there  is  not  a  shred  of   evidence  that  it  was  of   the  least 
importance).     Let  us  suppose  further,  for  one  moment  only,  that  on  all 
these  points  the  conclusions   of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  and  other  modern 
critics  really  represent  the  facts.     What  would  have  been  the  consequence 
if  our  Lord  had  spoken  in  accordance  with  these  conclusions?     He  must 
have  begun  by  going  into  an  historical  disquisition — in  other  words,  by 
diverting  their  thoughts  into  a  channel  for  which  they  were  totally  unpre- 
pared, and  to  a  task  for  which  they  were  hopelessly  unfitted,  and  even 
helpless  ;  or  He  must  have  assumed  the  truth  of  these  conclusions,  and 
spoken  to  them  of  the  Law  of  Samuel,  or  the  Second  Law  of  Jeremiah, 
or  the  Levitical  Law  of  Ezckiel.     In  the  former  case  He  would  have  per- 
plexed and  bewildered  His  hearers  ;  He  would  have  wasted  time  needed 
for  quite  other  things,  and  made  the  discharge  of  His  own  mission  hope- 
less.   In  the  latter  case  He  would  have  been  altogether  unintelligible,  and 
His  utterances  would  have  been  received  as  those  of  a  madman.     Such 
is  the  miserable  folly  into  which  good  men  may  be  hurried  when  they 
will  have  it  that  the  ark  of  God  must  fall,  if  they  do  not  put  out  their  _ 
band  to  save  it. 

X  2 


3o8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 


Seventh  Article,  to  which  the  Committee  confined  all  the 
references  they  have  made  to  the  judgement  of  the  Church 
on  the  question,  though  this  was  the  only  matter  into 
which  it  was  their  business  to  inquire.  The  Article  alludes 
to  '  the  law  given  from  God  by  Moses,'  a  slender  foundation 
for  any  inference  as  to  the  record  of  that  law,  much  more 
as  to  the  authorship  of  other  parts  of  the  Pentateuch, 
especially  as  the  name  of  Moses  does  not  occur  in  the 
enumeration  of  the  canonical  books  in  the  Sixth  Article. 
If  the  question  had  been  as  to  the  authority  of  the  Book  of 
Psalms,  few  persons  probably  would  think  that  it  had  been 
dogmatically  decided  by  the  Church,  because  in  the  Prayer 
Book  the  Psalter  is  described  as  the  '  Psalms  of  David.' 

"  The  third  proposition,  'variously  stated  in  the  book,'  relates 
to  the  historical  truth  of  the  Pentateuch,  which  the  author 
denies,  not  in  the  sense  that  everything  in  it  is  pure  fiction, 
but  that  all  is  not  historically  true. . . .  But  it  is  to  be  regretted 
that  the  Committee  should  again  have  lost  sight  of  the 
object  for  which  they  were  appointed,  and  have  omitted  to 
refer  to  any  doctrine  of  the  Church  which  the  author  has 
zontradicted.  This  was  the  more  incumbent  on  them,  since 
a  recent  judgement  has  formally  sanctioned  a  very  wide 
latitude  in  this  respect.  It  is  clear  that  in  such  things  there 
cannot  be  two  weights  and  measures  for  different  persons  ; 
and  also  that  it  does  not  belong  to  any  but  legal  authority 
to  draw  the  line  by  which  the  freedom,  absolutely  granted 
in  theory,  is  to  be  limited  in  practice. 

"  These  are  the  propositions  which  they  extract  as  the  '  main 
propositions '  of  the  book,  which,  though  not  pretending  to 
'  pronounce  definitely  whether  they  are  or  are  not  heretical,' 
they  denounce  as  involving  '  errors  of  the  gravest  and  most 
dangerous  character.'  But  they  proceed  to  cite  a  further 
proposition,  which  the  author  states  in  the  form  of  a  ques- 
tion, to  meet  an  objection  which  had  been  raised  against 
his  main  conclusion,  as  virtually  rejecting  our  Lord's  I 
authority,  by  which,  as  the  Committee  state,  '  the  genuine-  ' 
ncss  and  authenticity  of  the  Pentateuch  have  been 
guaranteed  to  all  men.'    Whether  the  passages  in  which  our 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  309 

Lord  quotes  or  alludes  to  the  Pentateuch  amount  to  such  a 
guarantee,  is  a  point  which  they  do  not  discuss.  They  only 
observe  that  the  proposition  '  questions  our  Lord's  Divine 
knowledge' ;  and  with  this  remark  they  drop  the  subject. 
"  Considering  that  this  proposition  is  incomparably  the  most 
important  of  all  that  they  cite,  ....  one  is  surprised  that 
it  should  have  been  dismissed  with  so  very  cursory  and  im- 
perfect a  notice.  For  it  is  not  even  clear  that  it  correctly 
expresses  the  author's  meaning.  The  question  which  he 
raises  does  not  properly  concern  our  Lord's  Divine  know- 
ledge— that  is,  the  knowledge  belonging  to  His  Divine 
nature.  It  is  whether  His  human  knowledge  was  co-exten- 
sive with  the  Divine  omniscience.  It  is  obvious,  at  the  first 
glance,   what  a  vast   field   of  speculation,  theological   and 

metaphysical,  is  opened  by  this  suggestion Bishop 

Jeremy  Taylor  observes  :  '  Those  that  love  to  serve  God  in 
hard  questions,  use  to  dispute  whether  Christ  did  truly,  or 
in  appearance  only,  increase  in  wisdom.  Others  apprehend 
no  inconvenience  in  affirming  it  to  belong  to  the  verity  of 
human  nature,  to  have  degrees  of  understanding  as  well  as 
of  other  perfections  ;  and  although  the  humanity  of  Christ 
made  up  the  same  person  with  His  Divinity,  yet  they  think 
the  Divinity  still  to  be  free,  even  in  those  communications 
which  were  imparted  to  His  inferior  nature.'  ...  It  is  clear 
to  which  side  Taylor  inclines.  But  I  must  own  I  should  be 
sorry  to  see  these  hard  questions  revived.  .  .  .  Still  more 
should  I  deprecate  any  attempt  of  the  Church  of  England 
to  promulgate  a  new  dogma  for  the  settlement  of  this  con- 
troversy. But  at  least,  as  their  remark  indicated  that  the 
Bishop  had  in  their  judgement  fallen  into  some  grave  error, 
it  was  due  not  only  to  him  but  to  the  readers  of  their 
Report,  and  to  the  Church  at  large,  that  they  should 
have  pointed  out  what  the  error  was  by  a  comparison  with 
the  doctrine  of  the  Church,  which  it  was  supposed  to 
contradict."  ^ 

Having  thus  demolished  all  the  allegations  of  the  Convo- 
Ch'.xrgc,  1863,  pp.  103  115. 


31  o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  vii. 

cation  Committee,  Bishop  Thirlwall  deals  in  conclusion  a 
crushing  blow  on  the  whole  theory  of  Bishop  Colenso's  self- 
styled  judge  and  prosecutors  at  Capetown.  That  theory 
regards  the  Bible  as  an  organic  whole  in  the  sense  that  every 
portion  of  it  is  of  the  like  authority,  that  every  sentence  in  it 
deserves  to  be  treated  with  the  same  reverence,  and  that  thus 
no  distinction  can  be  drawn  between  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  and  the  narrative  of  Samson's  exploits  at  Ramathlehi 
with  the  thousand  absurdities  and  impossibilities  involved  in 
it.  The  burden  which  these  vehement  partisans  would  impose 
on  the  minds  and  consciences  of  men  is  so  huge  and  so  utterly 
past  all  bearing,  that  the  incisive  words  in  which  Bishop 
Thirlwall  scatters  this  theory  to  the  winds  may  be  accepted 
with  a  feeling  of  the  deepest  thankfulness.  No  doubt  the 
conclusion  may  have  been  as  little  welcome  to  Mr.  Maurice 
as  to  Bishop  Gray ;  but  the  fact  remains,  in  Dr.  Thirlwall's 
words,  that 

"  a  great  part  of  the  events  related  in  the  Old  Testament  has 
no  more  apparent  connexion  with  our  religion  ....  than 
those  of  Greek  and  Roman  history.  The  history,  so  far  as 
it  is  a  narrative  of  civil  and  political  transactions,  has  no 
essential  connexion  with  any  religious  truth  ;  and  if  it  had 
been  lost,  though  we  should  have  been  left  in  ignorance  of 
much  that  w^e  desired  to  know,  our  treasure  of  Christian 
doctrine  would  have  remained  whole  and  unimpaired.  The 
numbers,  migrations,  wars,  battles,  conquests,  and  reverses 
of  Israel,  have  nothing  in  common  with  the  teaching  of 
Christ,  with  the  way  of  salvation,  with  the  fruits  of  the 
Spirit.  They  belong  to  a  totally  different  order  of  subjects. 
They  are  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  spiritual  revelation 
contained  in  the  Old  Testament,  much  less  with  that  fulness 
of  grace  and  truth  which  came  by  Jesus  Christ.  Whatever 
knowledge  we  may  obtain  of  them  is,  in  a  religious  point 
of  view,  a  matter  of  absolute  indifference  to  us  ;  and  if  they 
w^ere  placed  on  a  level  with  the  saving  truths  of  the  Gospel, 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  311 


they  would  gain  nothing  in  intrinsic  dignity,  but  would  only 
degrade  that  with  which  they  are  thus  associated.  Such  an 
association  may,  indeed,  exist  in  the  minds  of  pious  and 
even  learned  men  ;  but  it  is  only  by  means  of  an  artificial 
chain  of  reasoning,  which  docs  not  carry  conviction  to  all 
beside.  Such  questions  must  be  left  to  every  man's  judge- 
ment and  feeling,  which  have  the  fullest  right  to  decide  for 
each,  but  not  to  impose  their  decisions,  as  the  dictate  of 
an  infallible  authority,  on  the  consciences  of  others.  Any 
attempt  to  erect  such  facts  into  articles  of  faith  would  be 
fraught  with  danger  of  irreparable  evil  to  the  Church,  as 
well  as  with  immediate  hurt  to  numberless  souls."  ^ 

The  remarks  of  Dr.  Thirlwall  were  evoked  by  the  censures 
of  the  Committee  of  Convocation  ;  but  they  make  of  none 
effect  the  whole  of  the  pleadings  in  the  so-called  trial  at 
Capetown,  and  they  also  condemn  by  anticipation  the  whole 
string  of  propositions  again  affirmed  by  Bishop  Gray's  asses- 
sors, and  promulgated  finally  by  Bishop  Gray  himself  with 
such  authority  as  he  could  impart  to  his  judgement.  Thus  far 
the  ship  which  Bishop  Gray  had  been  steering  had  gone  on  its 
course  with  sails  full  spread.  The  prosecutors  had  spoken 
with  a  unanimity  astonishing  in  thinking  men.  His  assessors 
had  given  their  solemn  approval  of  every  point  laid  down  by 
the  accusers.  The  condemnation  was  complete  and  unquali- 
fied ;  and  it  remained  only  for  the  judge  to  inforce  the  law  of 
the  Church  by  an  authoritative  declaration  which  should  not 
only  deprive  the  defendant  of  all  spiritual  functions,  but  be 
binding  on  the  whole  of  the  Anglican  communion,  if  it  would 
not  bind  all  Christendom.  The  accused  was  not  present.  He 
had  by  his  agent  entered  a  protest  against  the  self-assumed 
jurisdiction  of  the  judge  and  against  all  his  proceedings. 
Although  not  called  upon  either  in  duty  or  in  law  to  do  so, 
he  had  asserted  in  his  letter  of  protest  that  he  had  neither 

^  Charge,  1863,  p.  123. 


312  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  CHAP.  vii. 

written  nor  published  anything  which  offended  against  the  law 
of  the  Church  of  England.  But  to  the  charges  contained  in 
the  several  schedules  exhibited  in  the  Metropolitan's  court 
he  made  no  reply.  Some  defence,  however,  seemed  in  the 
eyes  of  Bishop  Gray  to  be  called  for.  He,  therefore,  called 
on  his  Registrar  to  read  a  letter,  written  two  years  before, 
August  7,  1861,  which,  as  he  said,  the  Bishop  had  put  in  in 
his  defence,  and  to  which  he  had  called  the  special  attention 
pf  the  court. 1  In  the  heat  of  this  miserable  controversy, 
provoked  by  his  own  extravagant  notions  of  Metropolitical 
power.  Bishop  Gray  could  scarcely  touch  on  any  topic  without 
misrepresenting  it.  The  letter^  to  which  reference  was  made 
was  mentioned  in  the  letter  of  protest.  But  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  did  not  say  that  he  put  it  in  in  defence,  nor  did 
he  call  to  it  the  special  attention  of  the  court.  He  never 
named  the  court  at  all.  He  could  not  do  so  because  he 
did  not  recognise  its  existence,  and  he  was  not  even  aware 
of  the  existence  of  the  second  court  which  pretended  to  try 
him.  All  that  he  did  was  to  refer  Bishop  Gray  to  his  earlier 
letter  for  an  explanation  of  his  meaning  in  some  of  the 
passages  objected  to  in  the  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans,  adding  only,  "  I  desire  also  to  call  your  attention  " 
(not  that  of  the  court)  "to  the  preface  to  Part  HI.,  a  copy  of 
which  I  forward  by  this  mail."  ^  The  letter,  however,  was  read 
by  way  of  a  defence  ;  and  the  Metropolitan  then  proceeded 
to  deliver  his  judgement. 

This  judgement  it  is  unnecessary  to  review  at  any  length. 
Theologically,  it  is  in  complete  agreement  with  the  opinions 
of  his  assessors,  and  the  pleadings  of  the  prosecuting  clergy. 
But  something  must  be  said  about  the  position  taken  by  Bishop 
Gray,  and  the  method  by  which  he  justified  his  verdict. 

He   professed,  in  the   first    place,  to    sit   as   Metropolitan, 

1   Trial,  p.  244. 

-  The  earlier  letter  here  referred  to  is  given  in  Appendix  A. 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  313 


with  full  coercive  and  deposing  powers,  by  virtue  of  the 
Royal  letters  patent  to  which  he  appealed.  He  did  not 
indeed  say  that  this  claim  was  admitted  by  the  defendant, 
but  he  had  no  doubt  on  the  subject  himself.  This  was  a 
purely  legal  question,  and  it  turned  necessarily  on  the  date 
of  the  patent.  To  judge  the  Bishop  of  Natal  by  virtue  of 
powers  conferred  by  a  patent  dated  about  a  fortnight  later 
than  his  own  would  have  been  an  intolerable  injustice.  At 
the  time  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal's  consecration  Bishop  Gray's 
letters  patent  were  not  in  existence  :  and  it  was  impossible 
therefore  for  the  former  to  know  what  might  be  their  tenor. 
Xo  doubt  by  his  own  patent  the  Bishop  of  Natal  admitted 
himself  to  stand  in  a  certain  relation  to  the  Bishop  of  Cape- 
town ;  and  by  the  promises  thus  made  he  was  bound. 
According  to  Bishop  Gray,  he  had  acknowledged  that  he  stood 
in  the  relation  of  a  Suffragan  Bishop  to  the  Metropolitan, 
who  was  invested  with  the  powers  and  authority  of  that  office. 
But  not  very  long  ago  Bishop  Gray  had  himself  been  in  doubt 
as  to  the  extent  and  nature  of  this  power  and  authority. 
When  in  1858  he  administered  a  wise  rebuke  to  the  Dean  of 
Maritzburg,  he  said  that  he  could  reply  to  him  only  through 
his  Bishop. 

"  I  am  doubtful,"  he  added,  "  as  to  the  extent  of  Metro- 
politan jurisdiction  in  such  a  matter  as  you  have  submitted 
to  me  (a  point  not  so  easy  to  be  determined  as  you  may, 
perhaps,  imagine).  I  cannot  venture  to  give  a  judicial 
opinion  upon  the  case  laid  before  me.  All  that  I  can  do 
is  to  give  both  you  and  the  Bishop  my  views  upon  this 
unfortunate  dispute  which  has  arisen." 

But  nothing  had  occurred  in  the  interval  to  solve  and 
remove  these  doubts  ;  and  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was  firmly 
and  most  rightly  resolved  that  he  would  admit  no  obligations 
which   he   had  not  taken  upon  himself  at  the  time  of  his 


314  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

consecration.  He  had  then  taken  the  oath  of  canonical 
obedience  to  the  Metropolitan.  But  it  had  been  ruled  by 
the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  ^  that 

■"  the  oath  of  canonical  obedience  does  not  mean  that  the 
clergyman  will  obey  all  the  commands  of  the  Bishop 
against  which  there  is  no  law,  but  that  he  will  obey  all  such 
commands  as  the  Bishop  by  law  is  authorised  to  impose." 

Having  before  him  the  principle  thus  laid  down,  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  recognise  in  Bishop  Gray  a  power  of 
sitting  in  judgement  upon  him,  and,  if  need  be,  deposing  him  ; 
but  his  own  letters  patent  placed  the  matter  well-nigh  beyond 
reach  of  question.     In  these  it  was  merely  provided  that 

"  the  said  Bishop  of  Natal  and  his  successors  shall  be  subject 
and  subordinate  to  the  see  of  Capetown,  and  to  the  Bishop 
thereof  and  his  successors,  in  the  same  manner  as  any 
Bishop  of  any  see  within  the  Province  of  Canterbury,  in 
our  Kingdom  of  England,  is  under  the  authority  of  the 
Archiepiscopal  see  of  that  Province  and  of  the  Archbishop 
of  the  same." 

This  patent,  it  is  obvious,  did  not  convey,  and  could  not 
convey,  to  the  Metropolitan  of  Capetown  a  power  not  pos- 
sessed by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury ;  and  certainly  the 
latter  had  no  power  of  summoning  his  suffragans  before  himself 
to  undergo  a  trial  and  receive  a  sentence.  The  proceedings 
<^-  must  take  the  legal  form,  which  reserves  for  all  the  orders  of 
the  clergy  an  appeal  in  the  last  resort  to  the  Crown. 

This  appeal,  as  we  shall  see,  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  was 
resolved  to  bar  ;  and  in  spite  of  professions,  at  starting,  to  the 
contrary,  he  was  not  less  resolved  on  trying  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  by  a  wider  standard  than  the  law  would  allow  to  a 
judge  in  England. 

1  In  the  case  of  Long  v.  Bishop  of  Capetown. 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  315 

"  In  forming  a  decision,"  he  declared,  "  as  to  the  soundness  or 
unsoundness  of  the  Bishop's  views,  I  shall  be  guided  entirely 
by  the  language  of  the  Articles  and  formularies,  including, 
of  course,  the  whole  Book  of  Common  Prayer."  ^ 

But  English  practice  confined  the  investigation  virtually  to 
the  Articles  of  Religion,  and  to  the  interpretation  of  them  in 
their  plain,  literal,  and  grammatical  sense.  In  the  sentence 
just  cited.  Bishop  Gray  does  not  mention  the  Church,  and 
this  seemingly  was  done  of  set  purpose,  for  he  at  once  goes 
on  to  say, 

"  I  do  not  mean  thereby  to  imply  that  these  are  the  only  tests 
by  which  the  Bishops  of  this  Church  should  try  the  teaching 
of  its  ministers." 

Here  the  word  Church  denotes  not  the  Church  of  England, 
but  the  Church  of  South  Africa  ;  and  the  term  is  used  in  a 
third  sense  when  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  "  the  received  faith 
of  the  Church  in  all  ages."  Thus  we  have  three  senses  in 
which  the  word  may  be  taken,  and  the  uses  may  be  so  inter- 
changed as  to  make  it  by  no  means  easy  to  ascertain  the 
application  in  given  instances.  He  was  thus  provided  with 
an  armoury  of  weapons,  which,  unless  they  should  be  very 
blunderingly  used,  must  insure  his  victory.  In  the  first 
place 

"  the  decisions  of  those  Councils  which  the  Church  of 
England  regards  as  oecumenical  are  the  very  highest 
authorities  by  which  "  the  Bishops  of  the  Church  of  South 
Africa  "  could  be  guided." 

To  these  must  be  added  "  the  received  faith  of  the  Church 
in  all  ages,"  and  the  three  creeds,  as  expressing  "  the  mind 
and  faith,  not  only  of  the  Church  of  England,  but  also  of 
the  whole  Catholic  Church  from  the  beginning."      In  their 

'   Trial,  p.  341. 


3i6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  vii. 


application  to  a  particular  case,  he  must  necessarily  be  the 
interpreter  of  all  these  authorities.  But  in  this  interpretation 
he  would,  whenever  it  was  possible  to  do  so,  "  decide  by  the 
literal  and  grammatical  sense  of  the  words."  When  the  sense 
was  not  plain,  he  would  "interpret  them  b}'  a  comparison  of 
passages,  ...  by  the  history  of  the  controversies  which  gave 
rise  to  them,  by  the  analogy  of  the  faith,"  having  regard 
always  "  to  the  animus  iniponentis,  the  intention  of  the  Church 
in  the  wording  of  its  documents."  ^  It  is  clear  that  these 
analogies  must  be  traced,  and  these  intentions  ascertained,  by 
himself.  Finally,  when  he  came  to  the  examination  of  certain 
of  the  schedules  of  accusation.  Bishop  Gray  decided  the 
question  by  a  direct  appeal  to  the  Scriptures,  and  thus 
opened  a  still  wider  field,  with  larger  opportunities  for  securing 
a  conviction.  So  equipped,  he  had  no  difficulty  in  declaring 
that  the  Church  of  England,  or,  rather,  the  Church,  held  the 
doctrine  of  substitution  in  reference  to  the  life  and  death  of 
Christ,  and  affirmed  that  He  suffered  to  appease  and  remove 
the  Divine  anger.  He  had  no  difficulty  in  laying  it  down 
that  the  Church  did  not  regard  the  heathen  as  having  before 
their  conversion  any  part  in  Christ,^  none  in  deciding  that 
she  denied  that  all  men  everywhere  were  accounted  righteous 
before  God,^  none  in  determining  that  the  Bishop  of  Natal's 
statements  with  reference  to  the  sacrament  of  baptism  were 
not  covered  by  the  final  decision  in  the  Gorham  case. 

"  I  am  aware,"  he  says,  "  that  practically  the  discipline  of  the 
Church  has  been  such  that  clergy  have  been  allowed  to 
express  themselves  on  the  subjective  side  of  the  sacraments 
very  variously,  chiefly,  perhaps,  because  of  the  difficulty  of 
defining  exactly  that  which  is  in  truth  a  mystery  ;  and  that 
the  right  to  do  so  has  been  considered,  so  far  as  Holy  Baptism 
is  concerned,  to  be  strengthened  by  a  celebrated  decision 
wdiich,  though   not   given    by   the   Church,    or   by   judges 

1   Trial,  p.  343.  2  /^  p_  3^5.  ^  /^,  360. 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  317 

authorised  by  it,  has  not  formally  been  set  aside  by  it.  But  no 
such  language  or  teaching  as  that  which  I  consider  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  has  been  shown  to  have  committed  himself  to,  has 
ever,  so  far  as  I  know,  been  sanctioned  or  tolerated  within 
the  Church."  ^ 

Even  if  the  facts  were  as  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  stated 
them,  the  only  inference  to  be  drawn  from  them  would  be 
that  the  new  point  thus  raised  should  be  referred  by  appeal 
to  the  same  tribunal  which  had  dealt  with  the  Gorham  case. 
But  to  this  course  Bishop  Gray  was  resolved  never  to  commit 
himself.  It  was  enough  that  his  own  view  of  this  matter  was 
different,  and  it  was  enough  too  that  he  could  not  admit  the 
ruling  of  the  Judicial  Committee  in  the  case  of  Williams  and 
Wilson.  That  ruling  had  declared  that  the  Church  of  England 
had  not  pronounced  authoritatively  that  the  state  of  sinners 
after  death  was  hopeless.  Bishop  Gray  insisted  that  the 
Catholic  Church  had  always  maintained  this  hopelessness,  and 
that  the  Church  of  South  Africa  was  bound  to  maintain  it  also. 
Nay,  he  asserted  further,  that,  in  spite  of  the  Williams-W' ilson 
judgement,  the  Church  of  England  maintained  it  likewise. 
Did  not  the  Athanasian  Creed  say  plainly  that  they  that  have 
done  good  shall  go  into  life  everlasting,  and  they  that  have 
done  evil  into  everlasting  fire  .''  But  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
had  probably  never  paused  to  think  what  answer  he  would 
return  to  a  questioner  who  might  ask  him  whether  God,  the 
righteous  Judge  and  loving  Father,  could  ever  make  a  com- 
promise with  sin  ;  or  to  consider  the  consequences  involved  in 
the  answering  this  question  in  the  negative.  If  the  idea  of 
such  a  compromise  was  inconceivable,  then  all  theories  of  par- 
tial salvation  were  shown  to  be  untenable,  and  not  only  unten- 
able but  mischievous  and  utterly  misleading,"  and  therefore 

'    Trial,  p.  362. 

^  See  the  whole  argument  in  the  Conuiientary  on  the  Romans,  already 
given  in  Chap.  IV. 


<r 


31 8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

all  minor  considerations  become  matters  of  no  moment. 
But  such  minor  considerations  there  were,  and  these,  too,  of 
no  small  consequence,  if  the  conviction  of  St.  Paul  was  not 
held  to  be  decisive  on  the  subject.  One  of  the  minor  matters 
to  be  thus  considered  was  the  fact  that  the  words  of  the 
Athanasian  Creed  could  not  bear  the  sense  put  upon  them  by 
Bishop  Gray.  This  sense,  in  the  words  of  a  well-known 
clergyman  still  living,  would  be  this  : — 

"  They  that  at  the  moment  of  death  are  in  a  state  of  peace 
with  God  through  faith  and  repentance  will  at  the  Day  of 
Judgement  enter  upon  a  state  of  immeasurable  and  endless 
felicity  ;  they  that  at  the  moment  of  death  are  in  their 
natural  state,  and  not  reconciled  to  God,  will  at  the  Day  of 
Judgement  enter  upon  a  state  of  fearful  and  endless  misery. 

"  But  the  Creed  makes  no  allusion  to  the  state  of  the  soul  at 
the  moment  of  death.  Its  two  clauses  are  '  they  that  have 
done  good,'  and  '  they  that  have  done  evil.'  Is  there  any 
one  so  good  as  not  to  have  done  evil }  St.  John  and  the 
universal  human  conscience  reply  :  '  If  we  say  that  we  have 
no  sin,  we  deceive  ourselves,  and  the  truth  is  not  in  us.'  On 
the  other  hand,  where  can  we  point  to  a  brother-man  of  whom 
we  can  say  that  he  is  so  evil  as  never  to  have  done  good  .''  If, 
then,  human  beings  in  general  have  done  both  good  and  evil, 
how  are  we  to  separate  the  two  classes  which  are  to  inherit 
such  different  destinies  .•*  The  question  is  no  easy  one.  It 
will  be  answered  very  differently.  It  may  be  said  that  God's 
infinite  wisdom  is  able  to  strike  a  balance  between  the  good 
and  the  evil  that  a  man  has  done,  and  that,  according  as  the 
good  or  evil  preponderates,  he  will  be  classed  with  the  doers 
of  good  or  the  doers  of  evil.  But  who  will  be  satisfied  with 
such  an  account  of  God's  dealings  with  men  .''  Another 
view  would  be,  that  true  faith  wuth  the  forgiveness  that 
follows  it  blots  out  previous  evil  works  ;  that  one  who  has 
the  true  faith  is  considered  as  a  righteous  man,  and  there- 
fore as  a  doer  of  good  for  Christ's  sake  ;  and  that  when  a 
man   dies   a   true    believer   these    benefits    accrue    to   him, 


I 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  319 

however  recently  he  may  have  come  to  the  state  of  faith. 
Let  us  suppose  this  to  be  sound  theology ;  but  can  it  for  a 
moment  be  said  to  be  the  literal  grammatical  interpretation 
of  the  Athanasian  article  ?  ...  It  is  common  to  lay 
down  general  propositions  about  the  good  man  and  the  bad 
man,  the  strong  and  the  weak,  the  rich  and  the  poor.  When 
we  come  to  apply  them  to  actual  persons,  we  must  speak  of 
the  man  so  far  as  he  is  good  or  bad,  rich  or  poor.  Very 
likely  the  same  man  may  be  in  different  ways  or  senses 

both  good  and  bad,  both  rich  and  poor Similarly 

we  may  believe  that  it  is  the  strictest  possible  law  of  God's 
judgement  that  they  who  have  done  good  shall  go  into 
eternal  life,  and  they  that  have  done  evil  into  everlasting 
fire  ;  .  .  .  .  whilst  it  may  well  be  true  that  the  life  and  the 
fire,  the  praise  and  the  wrath,  may  touch  the  same  person, 
and  that  every  sinner  on  the  earth,  so  far  as  he  has  been  a 
doer  of  good,  shall  be  rewarded,  and  so  far  as  he  has  been 
a  doer  of  evil  shall  be  punished."  ^ 

But  having  cited  the  Athanasian  Creed  in  support  of  his 
own  statements  with  regard  to  the  punishment  of  sinners, 
Bishop  Gray  found  himself  called  upon  to  deal  with  the  fact 

"that  in  the  Articles  of  1552  there  was  one,  the  42nd,  which 
expressly  condemned  those  who  held  the  opinion  that  all 
men  shall  be  saved  at  last,  but  that  that  Article  was  omitted 
in  the  revision  of  the  Articles  in  1562." 

This  has  been  taken  as  evidence  that  the  design  of  laying 
down  any  authoritative  decision  on  this  subject  has  been 
deliberately  disclaimed  by  the  Church  of  England  ;  but  this 
the  Bishop  of  Capetown  could  by  no  means  admit.  The 
real  reason  for  the  omission  he  believes  to  be 

"  that  which  is  assigned  by  Hardwicke.  The  doctrines  of  the 
Anabaptists,  against  which  that  and  some  other  Articles 

^  Forgiveness  after  Death  J  London,  Longmans,  1862. 


320  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  CHAP.  vii. 

were  levelled,  were  no  longer  so  menacing  as  they  had  been 
a  few  years  before.  There  were,  therefore,  not  the  same 
urgent  reasons  for  proscribing  them."  ^  ^ 

For  Bishop  Gray  this  inference  was  a  matter  of  no  small 
importance.  It  involves  the  principle  that  the  Articles  gener- 
ally are  not  to  be  regarded  as  anything  like  a  definite  state- 
ment of  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of  England,  or  as  exhibiting 
the  extent  of  obligation  imposed  upon  the  clergy  of  that 
Church.  They  are  simply  statements  put  forth  by  way  of 
refuting  or  condemning  errors  which  in  greater  or  less  degree 
were  current  in  England  ;  but  there  was  no  warrant  for  the 
conclusion  that  nothing  more  was  required  from  the  English 
clergy.2  How  much  more  was  required,  the  Articles  did  not 
state  ;  and  this  was  a  question  which  must  be  determined  by 
the  decisions  of  the  spiritual  courts  of  the  English  communion. 
If  this  principle  be  allowed,  the  Metropolitan  might  crush  any 
one  without  difficulty.  But  this  principle  has  not  been  admit- 
ted :  it  has  been  formally  disallowed  by  the  Arches  Court  of 
Canterbury  and  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council. 
For  the  fact  itself  there  is  presumption  simply  ;  but  there  is 
no  conclusive  evidence,  when  evidence  of  the  most  cogent 
kind  is  indispensable.  That  an  error  which  destroys  the 
foundations  of  at  least  the  great  Calvinistic  school  or  party 
should  have  been  so  formidable  in  1552  as  to  call  for  a  special 
Article  in  condemnation  of  it,  and  have  come  to  be  of  so 
little  account  in  1562  as  to  make  it  necessary  and  prudent  to 
remove  that  Article,  is  an  amazing  fact  indeed,  if  it  be  a  fact 
at  all.  Is  it  conceivable  that  the  Revisers  of  1562  could  have 
looked  upon  this  so-called  error  as  one  which  was  certain  to 
have  no  attraction  for  English  minds,  or  that  Englishmen  of 
all  schools  were  so  thoroughly  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the 
Augustinian  or  Fulgentian  theories  as  to  need  no  sign-post  to 

1  Trial,  p.  369.  -  lb.  p.  378. 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  321 


warn  them  against  thoughts  which  might  lead  them  in  a  very 
different  direction  ? 

On  the  subject  of  Bishop  Colenso's  criticisms,  on  the  Pen- 
tateuch Bishop  Gray  takes  up  precisely  the  position  of  the 
Committee  of  Convocation  of  the  Province  of  Canterbury  ; 
and  of  this  position  Bishop  Thirlwall,  as  we  have  seen,  has 
demonstrated  the  utter  futility.  With  the  Committee,  Dr 
Gray  appeals  to  the  language  of  the  Prayer  Book,  and  to  the 
authority  of  Christ  Himself;  and  he  decides  emphatically 
that 

"  language  must  altogether  lose  its  meaning ;  pledges,  pro- 
mises, declarations,  must  be  regarded  as  so  much  waste 
paper,  if  the  words  of  the  Church  in  those  formularies  and 
Articles  which  speak  of  the  Bible,  and  which  are  in  accord- 
ance with,  and  must  be  interpreted  by,  the  language  of  the 
Church  on  this  great  subject  from  the  beginning,  are  not 
held  to  be  violated  by  the  Bishop  in  the  passages  which 
have  been  referred  to,  and  which  are  but  a  specimen  of  the 
views  propounded  by  him  throughout  his  books."  ^ 

But,  according  to  Dr.  Gray,  Bishop  Colenso  had  not  only 
impugned  the  authority  of  the  Bible  as  being  "  itself  the 
Word  of  God."  ^  He  had  put  forth  new  views  on  the  subject 
of  the  authorship  of  the  canonical  books.  Great  part  of  the 
Pentateuch  was  written,  not  by  Moses,  but  probably  by 
Samuel  ;  and  Deuteronomy  was  the  work  of  some  one 
living  in  the  time  of  Josiah,  not  improbably  of  the  prophet 
Jeremiah.  In  so  saying  Dr.  Gray  held  that  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  did  "  not  contradict  the  express  language  of  the  Church 
of  England."  ^ 

"  But  is  it  therefore,"  he  asks,  "  lawful  for  the  Bishop  to 
teach  that  Samuel,  and  not  Moses,  was  the  author  of  the 
Pentateuch  1      I  think  not.     The  case  is  widely  different 

1   Trial,  p.  382.  -  See  p.  290.  ■''   Trial,  p.  386. 

VOL.  I.  Y 


322  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

from  what  it  would  have  been  had  he  questioned  whether 
the  Second  Epistle  of  St.  Peter,  or  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  were  written  by  those  to  whom  they  have  been 
generally  attributed.  In  this  case  the  attributing  the 
Pentateuch  to  Samuel  is  not  only  opposed  to  the  stream 
of  writers  in  all  ages  of  the  Chvu'ch,  and  to  express  Canons 
— as  the  85  th  of  the  Apostolical  Canons — and  to  the 
internal  evidence,  and  even  the  assertions  of  the  Penta- 
teuch itself.  It  goes  beyond  this.  It  involves  the  rejection 
of  our  Lord's  authority,  and  of  His  words  as  delivered  to 
us  by  the  Church  in  the  Gospels,  as  we  have  them,  in 
which  the  Saviour  is  made  to  quote  from  each  of  the  books 
of  the  Pentateuch  ;  and  this  is  one  of  those  instances  to 
which  I  have  just  referred,  in  which  there  may  be  an  offence 
against  the  Church's  teaching,  while  there  is  none  against 
the  express  language  of  the  Articles  or  formularies."  ^ 

Here  again  we  have  Bishop  Gray  ruling  question  after 
question  on  the  authority  of  the  Church,  or,  in  effect,  on  his 
own  interpretations  of  statements  supposed  to  be  made  by 
that  Church.  Here  again  we  are  left  in  uncertainty  of  the 
meaning  in  which  the  term  Church  is  employed  ;  and  here 
again  also  documents  (such  as  the  Apostolical  Canons)  are 
referred  to  as  authoritative,  of  which  a  clergyman  in  England 
would  not  be  presumed  of  necessity  to  have  any  loTowledge, 
and  by  which,  therefore,  he  could  not  be  tested.  As  to  the 
allegations  of  "  rejecting  our  Lord's  authority,"  we  have  seen  - 
the  absurdity  of  the  dilemma  into  which  an  admission  of  the 
charge  would  lead  us.  We  have  seen  further  the  emphatic 
declaration  of  Bishop  Thirlwall  that  Bishop  Colenso's  language 
involves  no  such  rejection,  and  that  the  words  of  our  Lord 
have  no  bearing  on  the  point  in  debate.  The  monstrousness 
of  the  issue  becomes  obvious  when  we  find  a  Bishop  tried,  and 
condemned,  and  deposed  in  South  Africa  on  charges  which  a 

^   Trial,  p.  387.  ^  See  p.  307,  note. 


J 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  323 

Bishop  in  England  pronounces  to  be  groundless  in  fact,  and 
wholly  inadmissible. 

But  Bishop  Gray  was  not  to  be  deterred  by  any  such 
considerations.  Adhering  obstinately  to  the  sense  put  by 
himself  upon  documents  and  formularies,  he  declared  that 

"  if  Joshua  (the  man)  be  a  myth,  the  Flood  a  fiction,  the 
Exodus  not  a  real  fact,  a  large  part  of  that  Book  which  the 
Church  declared  to  be  '  God's  Word '  cannot  possibly  be 
God's  Word,  and  the  language  of  the  preface  to  the  Prayer 
Book  ...  is  entirely  mistaken," 

Even  if  Joshua  never  lived,  and  the  Flood  never  took  place, 
the  conclusion  drawn  by  Dr.  Gray  about  the  Pentateuch 
generally  does  not  necessarily  follow  ;  and  with  the  language 
of  the  preface  to  the  Prayer  Book  no  clergyman  perhaps  is 
required  to  be  familiar,  and  most  assuredly  it  is  nowhere  said 
that  he  is  bound  by  it.  But  Dr.  Gray  was  confronted  by  a 
recent  decision  in  England.  In  the  case  of  the  Bishop  of 
Salisbury  v.  Williams,  Dr.  Lushington  had  ruled  in  the 
Arches  Court, 

"  that  when  the  question  in  the  Ordination  Service  for 
Deacons  is  put,  '  Do  you  unfeignedly  believe  all  the 
Canonical  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  ? '  and 
to  which  the  answer  is  given,  '  I  do  believe  them,'  the 
pledge  then  given  must  be  regarded  as  sufficiently  fulfilled 
if  there  be  a  bona  fide  belief  that  the  Holy  Scriptures  con- 
tain everything  necessary  to  salvation  ;  and  that  to  that 
extent  they  have  the  direct  sanction  of  the  Almighty,  even 
apparently  though  the  historical  portion  of  Scripture  should 
be  disbelieved."  ^ 

This  last  qualif)-ing  clause  cannot  with  any  strictness  be 
applied  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  After  all  deductions  made 
by  his  criticisms  it  could  not  be  said   that  he  disbelieved  the 

1    Trial,  p.  3S8. 

Y  2 


324  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  vii 

historical  portion  of  Scripture,  because  he  held  that  there  was 
a  substantial  truth  in  the  narrative  of  the  going  down  to 
Egypt,  of  the  sojourn  there,  of  the  Exodus,  of  the  conquest  of 
Canaan,  of  the  partial  subjugation  of  the  old  inhabitants,  of 
the  influence  exercised  by  them  upon  the  Hebrew  people, 
of  the  administration  of  the  Judges,  and  the  growth  of  the 
country  under  the  early  Kings.  In  short.  Dr.  Gray  had  not 
paused  to  consider  what  he  meant  by  disbelief  of  Scripture 
history,  and  he  at  once  set  himself  in  opposition  to  Dr. 
Lushington's  judgement. 

"  I  cannot,"  he  said,  "  concur  in  such  a  decision  as  this.  It  is 
a  wrong  to  the  Church  thus  to  limit  the  meaning  and 
diminish  the  force  of  its  plain  language.  It  has  two  distinct 
statements, — as  to  what  the  Bible  is,  it  is  God's  word 
written  ;  the  other,  as  to  what  it  contains  with  regard  to  the 
faith,  it  contains  without  the  aid  of  tradition  all  things 
necessary  to  everlasting  salvation."  ^ 

We  are  not,  indeed,  told  in  which  of  its  three  senses  the 
word  CJiiirch  is  used  in  this  passage.  But  we  are  made  to  see 
that  in  every  stage  of  this  inquiry  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
insisted  on  appealing  to  the  Scriptures  ;  for  when  he  appealed 
to  the  "teaching  of  our  Lord  Himself,"  he  was  manifestly 
appealing  not  to  the  Prayer  Book  but  to  the  Bible,  although 
authoritative  decisions  had  declared  in  England  that  such  a 
course  was  altogether  inadmissible.  Both  the  Court  of  Arches 
and  the  Privy  Council  had  decided  that  they  were  bound  to 
look  solely  to  the  Articles  and  to  the  formularies,  and  had 
refused  to  take  account  of  passages  of  Scripture,  even  when 
found  in  the  Prayer  Book. 

"  Were  I  once  to  be  tempted,"  said  Sir  Stephen  Lushington, 
"  from  the  Articles  and  other  formularies,  the  court  could 
assign  no  limits  to  its  investigations  :    it  would  inevitably 

1   Trial,  p.  38S. 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  325 

be  compelled  to  consider  theological  questions,  not  for  the 
purpose  of  deciding  whether  they  were  conformable  to  a 
prescribed  standard,  but  whether  the  positions  maintained 
were  reconcilable  with  the  Scriptures  or  not.  ...  I  will  not 
be  tempted,  in  the  trial  of  any  accusation  against  any 
clergyman,  to  resort  to  Scripture  as  the  standard  by  which 
the  doctrine  shall  be  measured," 

Nor  was  this  the  only  blow  dealt  by  the  judge  of  the  Court 
of  Arches  against  the  principles  laid  down  by  the  Metropolitan 
of  Southern  Africa.     He  had  ruled 

"that  it  is  open  for  the  clergy  to  maintain  that  any  book 
in  the  Bible  is  the  work  of  another  author  than  him  whose 
name  it  bears." 

This  ruling  he  proceeds  to  explain  by  asking — 

"What  is  the  true  meaning  of  these  words  ?  I  apprehend, 
it  must  mean  this, — that  the  clergy  are  at  liberty  to  reject 
parts  of  Scripture,  upon  their  own  opinion  that  the  narrative 
is  inherently  incredible,  to  disregard  precepts  in  Holy  Writ, 
because  they  think  them  evidently  wrong.  Whatever  I 
may  think  as  to  the  danger  of  the  liberty  thus  claimed, 
still,  if  the  liberty  do  not  extend  to  the  impugning  of  the 
Articles  of  Religion,  or  the  formula ries,  the  matter  is  beyond 
my  cognisance." 

But  nothing,  it  seems,  could  bring  Bishop  Gray  to  define 
his  terms.  He  will  not  admit  Sir  S.  Lushington's  ruling, 
because  he  holds  that  in  the  Ordination  Service  the  candidate 
is  not  asked  whether  the  Scriptures  contain  all  things  neces- 
sary to  salvation,  but  whether  he  believes  them  to  be  God's 
word, — whether  he  believes  them  to  be  true.  The  Bishop  of 
Natal  might  reply  that  he  did  believe  them  to  be  God's  word, 
tliat  he  did  hold  them  to  be  true,  in  the  sense  that  they  taught 
men  to  seek  after  all  things  that  arc  good,  and  holy,  and 
lovely,  and  of  good  report.  But  this  was  not  what  Bishop  Gray 


326  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  vii. 

meant  by  truth  ;  and  therefore  he  felt  bound  to  decide  that 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  had  contradicted  the  teaching  of  Christ 
Himself  (395)  ;  and  in  spite  of  the  language  of  Jeremy 
Taylor/  he  persisted  in  maintaining  that,  by  speaking  of  our 
Lord  as  limited  in  His  human  nature  by  the  conditions  of 
knowledge  at  the  time  of  His  ministry,  he  was  denying  that 
He  is  God  and  Man  in  one  Person.     Thus 

"  in  imputing  to  our  Blessed  Lord  ignorance  and  the  possi- 
bility of  error,  the  Bishop  has  committed  himself  to  a  most 
subtle  heresy,  destructive  of  the  reality  of  the  Incarnation, 
and  he  has  departed  from  the  Catholic  faith,  as  held  in  the 
Church  from  the  beginning,  and  as  expressed  in  the  Second 
Article  and  in  the  Creeds."  (395.) 

Lastly,  he  held  the  Bishop  of  Natal  to  be  justly  charged 
with  depraving  the  Prayer  Book,  and  with  inviting  the  clergy 
to  disown  their  obligations  and  to  disobey  the  law  of  the 
Church.  He  forgot  that  Archbishop  Longiey  had  tried  to 
inforce  on  the  clergy  the  same  lesson.  No  power,  he  stated 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  should  induce  him  to  read  certain 
portions  of  the  Office  for  Burial  over  those  who  had  died  in 
known  sin  ;  and  he  advised  his  clergy  to  follow  his  example, 
promising  them  all  the  protection  that  he  could  afford  them. 
But  that  which  might  be  permitted  to,  and  be  laudable  in^ 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  could  not  be  tolerated  in 
the  Bishop  of  Natal.  Nothing,  therefore,  was  left  but  to  pass 
sentence  ;  and  in  the  exercise  of  a  jurisdiction  derived  from 
the  Queen's  letters  patent,  and  from  these  alone,  the  Bishop 
of  Capetown  decreed  the  Bishop  of  Natal 

"  to  be  deposed  from  the  said  office  as  such  Bishop,  and  to  be 
further  prohibited  from  the  exercise  of  any  divine  office 
within  any  part  of  the  Metropolitical  Province  of  Capetown.'*' 
(404-) 

^  See  p.  309 


1863.  THE  SO-CALLED  TRIAL  AT  CAPETOWN.  327 

This  judgement  and  sentence  Bishop  Gray  consented  to 
forward  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  for  his  revision,  if 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  should  desire  to  make  a  formal  appeal 
to  the  Primate.  But  this  appeal  he  allowed,  not  of  right, 
but  as  a  personal  favour  under  the  peculiar  circumstances 
of  the  case ;  and  the  appeal  was  to  be  made  not  to  the 
Primate  acting  through  his  judge  in  the  Court  of  Arches, 
from  which  a  further  appeal  would  lie  to  the  Crown,  but  only 
to  the  Archbishop  in  his  private  and  personal  capacity,  and 
beyond  him  it  was  not  to  go.  The  defiance  to  the  Crown 
of  England  could  scarcely  be  given  in  language  less 
equivocal. 

The  Metropolitan  having  thus  finished  his  work,  Dr.  Bleek, 
as  acting  for  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  handed  to  him  the  following 
protest : — 

"  On  behalf  of  the  Right  Reverend  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Natal, 
I  again  protest  against  the  legality  of  the  present  pro- 
ceedings and  the  validity  of  this  judgement ;  and,  with  all 
respect  towards  your  Lordship  personally,  I,  on  the  Bishop's 
behalf,  give  you  formal  notice  that  the  said  proceedings  and 
judgement  are  and  will  be  regarded  and  treated  by  him  as 
a  nullity,  void  of  all  force  and  effect. 

"  And  I,  in  like  manner,  further  give  notice  that  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  Avill,  if  the  same  shall  be  expedient  or  necessary,, 
and  if  he  shall  be  thereunto  advised,  appeal  from,  or  other- 
wise contest  the  lawfulness  of,  these  proceedings,  and  will, 
if  need  be,  resist  any  attempt  to  inforce  and  carry  out  the 
execution  of  this  judgement  in  such  manner  and  by  such 
lawful  ways  and  process  as  he  shall  be  advised  to  be 
proper." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

CONSEQUENCES   OF   THE   SO-CALLED   TRIAL  AT   CAPETOWN. 

The  opinion  of  Mr.  Maurice  on  the  Capetown  trial  and  the 
issues  involved  in  it  is  of  importance,  not  because  it  is  seem- 
ingly unlike  the  opinion  of  any  one  else,  but  because  few  had 
a  truer  and  deeper  insight  than  he  into  the  nature  of  the 
Divine  Kingdom.  For  him  the  presence  and  the  present 
abiding  and  unceasing  work  of  the  Heavenly  Father  of  all 
mankind  were  eternal  realities  ;  and" he  shrunk  therefore  from 
anything  which  limited  the  good  tidings  of  His  love.  If  there 
was  any  one  thing  above  another  which  the  accusers  of  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  denounced  with  unsparing  vehemence,  it  was 
the  conviction  that  the  Divine  purpose  is  to  battle  with  and  to 
overcome  sin,  in  all,  everywhere.  They  would  have  had 
nothing  but  an  anathema  for  the  w^ords  of  Mr.  Maurice  when 
he  says : — 

"  God  cares  for  every  man  whether  or  not  that  man  cares  for 
Him,  is  seeking  after  every  man  w^hether  or  not  that  man  is 
seeking  after  Him.  You  must  also  suppose  that  there  is  a 
Son  of  man  who  is  near  to  every  man,  who  is  his  Lord  and 
Brother,  who  died  for  him,  and  who  lives  for  him.  Yes  ! 
and  you  must  believe  also  that  if  my  Christianity,  or  your 
Christianity,  or  any  man's  Christianity,  stand  between  you 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      329 

or  me  or  him  and  God  who    is  our  Father,  Christ  who  is 
our  Brother,  He  will  sweep  that  Christianity  away."  ^ 

It  was  inevitable,  therefore,  that  when  the  Bishop  of  Cape- 
town professed  to  judge  from  a  tribunal  not  responsible  to 
any  tribunal  in  England,  and  to  pronounce  a  sentence  which 
should  be  none  the  less  valid  because  it  came  into  collision 
with  English  law,  Mr.  Maurice  should  without  hesitation  con- 
demn his  proceedings,  and  protest  against  their  consequences. 
His  belief,  Colonel  Maurice  tells  us, 

"in  the  appeal  to  justice,  and  to  fixed  laws  expounded  by 
lawyers  as  an  appeal  to  the  judgement  of  God  against  the 
tyranny  of  ecclesiastical  public  opinion," 

made  him  feel  very  strongly  on  the  subject. 

"  His  belief  that  Protestantism  is  for  each  nation  the  claim 
that  God  is  the  King  of  its  king,  that  God  presides  over 
the  law  courts  of  its  king  ;  his  belief  that  every  effort  to 
arrive  at  right  and  justice  is  an  effort  to  arrive  at  and  submit 
to  the  will  of  the  invisible  King, — made  him  more  and  more 
hostile  to  those  measures  which  it  became  each  year  more 
difficult  to  distinguish  from  intrigue  and  plotting  ;  of  which 
the  Bishop  of  Oxford  was  the  centre  ;  of  which  the  effect 
was  to  set  up  the  supremacy  of  what  might  be  the  current 
theological  opinions  of  the  day.  On  October  4th  he  wrote 
to  the  Times  a  letter  on  'the  Bishop  of  Capetown  and 
spiritual  jurisdiction,'  in  which  he  maintained  that  the  claim 
of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  to  set  up  a  'spiritual  jurisdic- 
tion '  contra-distinguished  to  the  rule  of  right  and  law  was 
the  one  against  which  the  very  existence  of  our  national 
Church  was  a  protest,  which  touched  the  most  sacred  point 
of  our  Protestant  national  position."  - 

Mr.  Maurice  was  one  of  whom  it  could  emphatically  be  said 
that  he  spoke  English,  and  he  wrote  English  ;  but  in  spite  of 

1  Life  of  Maurice,  ii.  p.  478.  -  lb.  ii.  p.  487. 


I 


330  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

this  it  was  not  always  that  he  succeeded  in  making  his  mean- 
ing plain,  and  it  was  often  most  difficult  to  understand  him 
when  he  spoke  or  Avrote  chiefly  in  monosyllables.  A  clergy- 
man in  the  diocese  of  Grahamstown,  recognizing  in  the  Cape- 
town Synod  no  authority  divine  or  human,  had  put  to  Mr. 
Maurice  the  seemingly  superfluous  question  how  he  would 
advise  him  to  treat  the  Bishop  of  Natal  in  the  contingency  of 
his  presenting  himself  as  a  communicant  in  his  church.  Mr. 
Maurice  might  have  told  him  that,  if  in  his  eyes  the  Cape- 
town Synod  had  no  authorit}-,  any  act  of  that  Synod  must  for 
him  be  nothing ;  or  he  might  have  referred  him  to  his  own 
conscience  ;  or  he  might  have  said  that  nothing  needed  to  be 
feared  from  the  obsolete  weapon  of  "excommunication."  In 
fact,  his  answer  was  : — 

"  With  your  feeling  you  could  not  treat  him  as  an  excom- 
municated person.  No  presbyter,  I  suppose  no  Bishop  in 
England,  would  dare  to  do  so  ;  I  should  think  the  act  in  a 
colony  in  which  he  has  dwelt  and  ministered — though  not  a 
part  of  his  diocese — more,  not  less,  inexcusable." 

On  the  point  of  his  being  allowed  to  preach,  Mr.  Maurice 
advised  his  correspondent  to  be  guided  by  the  judgement  of 
the  Bishop  of  Grahamstown.  So  far  his  meaning  is  clear. 
It  is  not  less  clear  when  he  adds  that  his  correspondent  is  not 
asked  by  English  law  to  pa}-  the  least  respect  to  the  decrees 
of  the  South  African  Synod  (which  are  declared  to  be  null  and 
void),  and  at  the  same  time  that  he  is  not  asked  to  recognize 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  in  that  character  {i.e.  as  Bishop  of  Natal^ 
being  free  to  consider  him  as  having  no  diocese  at  all.  We 
can  understand  the  words  ;  but  the  answer  is  that  Mr.  Maurice 
is  wrong  in  his  facts,  as  was  afterwards  made  plain  by  the 
judgement  of  Lord  Romilly.  Speaking  in  the  House  of  Lords 
after  the  delivery  of  the  so-called  Capetown  "judgement,"  Dr. 
Thirlwall  declared  that  Dr.  Colenso  was  as  much  and  as  really 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       331 

Bishop  of  Natal  as  he  himself  was  Bishop  of  St.  David's.  If 
Bishop  Colenso  had  no  longer  a  diocese,  who  had  deprived 
him  of  it  1  To  alloAv  that  Bishop  Gray  had  done  so  would 
concede  ever}'  point  for  which  the  Metropolitan  of  South 
Africa  was  contending.     Mr.  Maurice  adds  : — 

"  I  should  hope  he  would  submit  to  one  part  of  the 
decision  whilst  he  claims  the  benefit  of  the  other,  and 
not  go  back  to  a  country  where  he  has  not  a  legal  status, 
and  where  his  presence  can  breed  only  strife.  He  is  safe 
till  he  raises  the  question  in  the  colony.  If  it  is  raised, 
your  experience  of  the  feelings  of  the  laity,  and  the  positive 
expression  of  the  feelings  of  the  clergy,  convince  me  that 
he  would  come  off  worst." 

This  passage  is  partly  obscure,  and  where  it  is  not  obscure 
is  altogether  unworthy  of  Mr.  Maurice.  Even  Bishop  Gray 
never  maintained  that  Dr.  Colenso  might  not  after  his  sentence 
have  a  legal  sX.dXM's,  in  Natal,  His  contention  was  that  a  legal 
status  did  not  extend  neccssaril)-  beyond  temporalities,  and 
that  his  presence  in  Natal  would  breed  strife  not  for  lack  of 
the  legal  status,  but  because  he  had  been  deprived  of  all 
spiritual  authority.  Mr.  Maurice  was  wrong  also  in  his  esti- 
mate of  the  feeling  of  the  laity,  and  he  ought  to  have  taken 
pains  to  ascertain  whether  the  clergy  had  expressed  what 
they  really  felt.  When  after  the  reversal  of  a  portion  of  Dr. 
Lushington's  judgement  by  the  Privy  Council  on  the  appeal 
in  the  Williams-Wilson  case,  Dr.  Pusc}-  and  others  sent 
round  to  every  clerg}'man  in  England  a  declaration  of  faith 
which  they  were  entreated  to  sign  "  for  the  love  of  God," 
Mr.  Maurice  rightly  protested  against  the  cruelty  and  the 
cowardice  of  the  proceeding.  He  declared  that  it  meant 
just  this  : — 

"  Young  clergyrrien,  poor  curates,  poor  incumbents,  sign,  or  we 
will  turn  the  whole  force  of  religious  public  opinion  against 


LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 


you.  Sign,  or  we  will  starve  you  !  Look  at  the  Greek 
Professor,^  you  see  we  CAN  take  that  vengeance  on  those 
whom  we  do  not  like.  You  see  that  we  are  willing  to  take 
it,  and  that  no  considerations  of  faithful  and  devoted  ser- 
vices will  hinder  us.  This,"  he  adds  indignantly,  "  is  what 
is  called  signing  for  the  love  of  God.  I  accept  Dr.  Pusey's 
■own  statement,  tremendous  as  it  is,  I  say  that  the  God 
whom  we  are  adjured  to  love  under  these  penalties  is  not 
the  God  of  whom  I  have  read  in  '  the  Canonical  Scriptures,' 
not  the  God  who  declares  that  He  abhors  robbery  for 
burnt-offering."  ' 

But  the  clergy  of  Natal  were  even  poorer  and  more  help- 
less than  the  poorest  curates  and  incumbents  of  the  mother 
country.  For  the  pittance  on  which  they  lived  they  depended 
absolutely  on  the  good-will  of  the  Society  familiarly  known  as 
the  S.P.G.  Some,  and  even  the  majority,  may  have  been  as 
sacerdotally  minded  as  the  Metropolitan  of  South  Africa, 
although  this  has  not  been  proved,  and  is  not  likely  ;  but  if 
the  pressure  was  exercised  even  in  a  single  case,  where  the 
total  number  was  so  small,  then  there  was  a  cruel  exercise  of 
power,  with  which  the  pressure  put  upon  the  English  clergy 
could  hardly  be  compared.  It  was  proved  afterwards,  as  it 
might  have  been  suspected  at  the  first,  that  the  Natal  clergy 
were  not  free  agents  in  this  matter.  Colonel  Maurice  gives 
the  particulars  which  show  that  the  English  declaration,  which 
was  designed  to  uphold  faith  in  the  endless  and  useless  tor- 
turing of  sinners,  was  for  all  practical  purposes  worthless.^ 
The  result  of  the  methods  applied  in  Natal  was  not  a  jot  more 
creditable  to  Bishop  Gray  and  his  followers. 

But  the  case  becomes  more  perplexing  when  we  find  Mr. 
Maurice  insisting,  it  would  seem,  that  a  truth  which,  if  it  be  a 

^  Mr.  Jowett,  now  Master  of  Balliol  College,  and  lately  Vice-Chancellor 
of  the  University  of  Oxford. 

^  Life  of  Mam-ice,  ii.  p.  460.  3  /^_  Y\.  p.  470. 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      333 

truth  at  all,  must  be  an  eternal  verity,  falls  to  the  ground 
if  the  authority  of  some  particular  book  is  questioned  or 
rejected.  He  had  clung  to  what  he  called  the  Old  Testament 
maxim  that  God  Himself  is  the  Deliverer,  that  His  name 
is  the  ground  of  national  liberty.  But  why  this  maxim 
should  be  convicted  of  falsehood  if  it  should  be  shown  that 
the  Levitical  legislation  is  the  growth  of  an  age  subsequent 
to  the  Babylonish  captivity,  Mr.  Maurice  has  not  clearly 
shown  ;  and,  in  the  absence  of  some  explanation,  disin- 
terested men  may  be  pardoned  if  they  confess  their  inabilit}' 
to  follow  him.  Why  should  this  truth  have  been  any  the 
more  doubtful,  if  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  had  never 
been  gathered  into  one  collection,  or  if  they  had  never  been 
written  .''  For  some  mysterious  reason,  however,  he  had  con- 
vinced himself  that  no  foundation  was  left  for  this  spiritual 
belief  if  even  the  details  of  the  narrative  were  proved  to  be 
inaccurate  or  wrong. 

"To  have  a  quantity  of  criticism  about  the  dung  in  the  Jewisli 
camp,  and  the  division  of  a  hare's  foot,  thrown  in  my  face, 
when  I  was  satisfied  that  the  Jewish  history  had  been  the 
mightiest  witness  to  the  people  for  a  living  God  against  the 
dead  dogmas  of  priests,  was  more  shocking  to  me  than  I 
can  describe."  ^ 

Mr.  Maurice  continually  repeated  himself  It  becomes 
necessary,  therefore,  to  go  over  again  and  again  ground 
already  traversed.  There  can  be  no  reason  for  disputing 
his  dictum  that  the  Old  Testament  is  a  witness  for  libert}-. 
Yet  we  might  know  something  of  liberty  even  if  we  had 
never  heard  of  the  Old  Testament ;  nor  need  we  dispute  his 
conclusion  that 

"  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  was  waging  a  fiercer  war  against 
'Cad  principle  of  the  Old  Testament  than  Bishop  Colenso  has 

^  Life  of  Maurice,  ii.  p.  490. 


334  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

done.  A  thing  called  a  Church,  consisting  of  a  Metropoli- 
tan and  a  Synod,  a  poor  imitation  of  a  Popedom,  is  to 
set  aside  the  glorious  traditions  of  the  English  Jiatioii, 
which  were  grounded  upon  the  Old  Testament,  which 
were  the  deliverance  from  priestly  tribunals  and  a  king- 
bishop." 

The  traditions  may  be  thoroughly  sound  and  wholesome, 
and  the  Old  Testament  may  set  forth  with  all  clearness  the 
Divine  justice  and  righteousness  ;  but  in  spite  of  this  it  is 
conceivably  possible  that  the  former  may  not  have  been 
grounded  upon  the  latter.  This  possibility,  even  as  a  con- 
ception, lay  beyond  Mr.  Maurice's  ken. 

But  when  Mr.  Maurice  professed  to  be  grieved  and  shocked 
by  all  and  by  anything  that  the  Bishop  had  said  about  the 
Pentateuch,  he  forgot  that  there  were  others  who  jnight  be 
pained  and  shocked  by  his  own  attitude  ;  and  for  some  who 
were  thus  distressed  it  might  have  been  supposed  that  he 
would  wish  to  take  some  thought.  It  may  be  no  breach  of 
confidence  to  cite  the  following  sentences  from  a  letter  written 
by  Mrs.  Colenso,  February  18S5  : — 

"  I  have  been  reading  with  intensest  interest  the  life  of  Mr. 
Maurice,  which  Mrs.  Lyell  sent  me.  I  have  no  fault  at  all 
to  find  with  the  editor's  account  of  his  father's  treatment  of 
us  ;  and  I  suppose  nothing  else  was  to  be  expected  ;  but  I 
did  hope  that  one  whom  I  had  looked  on  as  a  prophet 
would  have  found  us  a  standing-point  for  our  faith  quite 
distinct  from  historical  beliefs.  But  no,  I  was  present,  and 
my  blood  ran  cold  when  he  whom  I  had  always  regarded 
as  a  saint,  as  nearer  to  God  than  any  other,  actually  said 
that  if  he  could  not  believe  that  Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch, 
he  could  not  believe  in  God  at  all  or  in  *  the  powers  of  the 
world  to  come.'     I  was  present,  you  know,  almost  all  the 

time    of  that  conference I    was    driven    at    last    to 

exclaim  in  despair,  *  O  Mr.  Maurice,  it  is  too  dreadful  to 
hear  such  words  from  your  lips.'     For  all  the  bitterness  of 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      335 

that  time,  the  suffering  of  it,  which  we  kept  very  much  to 
ourselves,   I  still  remember  F.   D.   Maurice  with  reverence 

and  affection I  think  he  might  have  taken  a  little 

more  pains  with  us,  instead  of  casting  us  off  at  once  with 
something  like  contempt.  But  I  found,  when  not  long 
afterwards  we  visited  the  Scotts  at  Manchester,  who  had 
been  very  intimate  with  him,  that  difference  of  opinion  did 
sometimes  meet  with  something  like  violence,  and  issue 
in  estrangement." 

In  delivering  judgement,  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  had 
openly  declared  his  refusal  to  acquiesce  in  decisions  recently 
delivered  by  the  judge  of  the  Court  of  Arches,  and  by  the 
Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council.  If  no  explanation 
of  the  fact  were  offered,  the  course  taken  by  the  Metropolitan 
of  South  Africa  might  be  regarded  as  open  defiance  of  the 
law  of  the  Church  of  England.  It  became  necessary,  there- 
fore, to  take  ground  which  would  account  for  the  use  of  this 
language.  With  the  principles  avowed  by  Bishop  Gray,  there 
was  no  alternative.  On  the  day,  therefore,  before  the  delivery 
of  the  sentence,  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  and  his  two  episcopal 
assessors  formed  themselves  into  a  "  Synod,"  and  laid  down 
a  number  of  resolutions,  intended  to  bind  all  the  members  of 
the  Church  of  England,  lay  and  clerical,  within  the  Province 
of  Capetown,  so  including  the  clergy  and  laity  of  the  diocese 
of  Natal.  In  these  resolutions  they  declared  that  the  Church 
of  the  Province  of  Capetown  rcceiv^es  the  standards  and 
formularies  of  the  Church  of  England,  but 

"  inasmuch  as  this  Church  is  not,  as  the  Church  of  England, 
'  by  law  established,'  and  inasmuch  as  the  laws  of  England 
have  by  treaty  no  force  in  this  colony,  those  laws  which 
have  been  enacted  by  statute  for  the  English  Church  as  an 
Establishment,  do  not  apply  to,  and  are  not  binding  upon, 
the  Church  in  South  Africa  ; " 

and  again. 


336  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

"This  Synod  considers  that  the  final  court  of  appeal,  con- 
stituted by  Act  of  Parliament  for  the  Established  Church 
of  England,  is  not  a  court  of  appeal  in  ecclesiastical  causes 
for  the  un-established  Church  in  this  colony  ;  and  therefore 
this  Synod  declares  that,  while  the  Church  in  this  Province 
is  bound  by,  and  claims  as  its  inheritance,  the  standards 
and  formularies  of  the  Church  of  England,  it  is  not  bound 
by  any  interpretation  put  upon  those  standards  by  exist- 
ing ecclesiastical  courts  in  England,  or  by  the  decisions  of 
such  courts  in  matters  of  faith." 

In  other  words,  whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  whether  the 
change  was  necessary,  or  justifiable,  or  not,  there  was  to  be  one 
law  for  England,  and  another  for  South  Africa.  A  clergyman, 
upheld  by  the  law  in  the  former,  might  find  himself  an  excom- 
municated heretic  in  the  latter.  The  power  of  interpretation 
might  furnish  an  indefinitely  elastic  line  ;  and  a  man  might 
pass  from  one  legal  status  to  another,  while  he  deluded  him- 
self with  the  idea  that  his  condition  remained  unchanged. 
One  question  remained  unanswered.  Was  this  a  keeping  of 
faith  with  all  who  went  out  to  the  colony  as  members  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  not  of  any  other  body .''  The  state 
of  things  brought  about  by  Bishop  Gray  was  a  state  of  war, 
affecting  the  interests  of  generations  yet  unborn.  In  the 
Bishop  of  Natal's  words,  the  issue  was 

"  no  less  than  this — whether  you  and  your  children  shall 
enjoy  hereafter  the  laws  and  liberties,  and  with  these  the 
light  of  life,  of  the  Church  of  England,  to  which  you 
belong  ;  or  whether,  among  the  clergy  and  laity  of  this 
diocese,  all  inquiry  shall  be  checked  and  crushed,  all 
thought  repressed,  and  the  aspirations  of  the  age  for  a 
wider,  more  comprehensive,  more  enlightened  Christianity 
exchanged  for  a  return  to  Patristic  theology  and  practice, 
the  decrees  of  the  '  Council  of  Antioch,  as  confirmed  by  the 
Council  of  Chalcedon,'  and  '  what  the  Church  held  in  the 
first  thousand  years  of  her  history.'  " 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       337 

Into  the  purely  legal  questions  connected  with  this  Synod 
it  is  unnecessary  to  enter ;  but  there  can  be  little  doubt,  or 
none,  that  by  holding  this  Synod  between  the  so-called  trial 
and  the  so-called  judgement  Dr.  Gray  was  multiplying  diffi- 
culties for  himself.  The  two  proceedings  were  entirely  distinct. 
They  were  also  not  judicial.  They  were,  in  short,  independent 
trials,  and  the  proceedings  in  the  Synod  appear  to  have  lacked 
the  most  elementary  and  essential  characteristics  of  a  trial. 
There  was  no  citation  of  the  accused,  no  accusers,  no  pleading, 
no  evidence.  There  could  therefore  be  no  judgement  and  no 
sentence.  It  is  not  true,  therefore,  to  say,  as  was  often  said 
subsequently,  that  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was  tried  by  a  Provin- 
cial Synod.^  He  was  not  summoned  to  it.  The  Synod  was 
beyond  doubt  an  afterthought.  It  professed,  indeed,  to  go 
through  certain  forms  of  trial  ;  but  these  forms  were  a  mere 
mockery  of  justice.  The  so-called  Synod  chose  to  say  that 
it  had  tried  the  Bishop.  Its  assertions  could  not  convert 
assumption  into  right,  or  farce  into  sober  fact. 

Between  the  years  1858  and  1866  nothing  had  occurred  to 
alter  the  complexion  or  significance  of  the  theory  of  ecclesias- 
tical ascendency  propounded  by  Bishop  Gray  as  Metropolitan 
of  South  Africa.  All  that  can  be  said  is  that  before  the  latter 
year  an  occasion  had  arisen  for  the  exercise  of  the  powers 
claimed  under  this  theory,  which  in  1858  the  Bishop  of  Gra- 
hamstown  had  not  looked  for.  Whatever  danger  for  the 
rights  and  freedom  of  the  clergy  and  laity  had  been  involved 
in  those  claims  in  185 8,  those  dangers  were  neither  lessened 
nor  increased  when  the  Metropolitan  proceeded  to  judge, 
condemn,  and  depose  his  brother  of  Natal  in  1S63.  But  in 
the  view  taken  of  these  claims  by  Bishop  Cotterill  change  of 
circumstances  had  wrought  a  marvellous  revolution.  It  is 
necessary  here  to  note  only  how  he  had  regarded  the  matter, 

1  J.  Urunel,  Remarks  on  the  Proceedings  at  Capetown  in  the  Matter  of 
the  Bishop  of  Natal ^  186S. 

VOL.  I.  Z 


338  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

while  yet  there  was  nothing  to  bHnd  his  eyes  to  dangers 
which  might  possibly  affect  himself.  In  1858,  Bishop  Cot- 
terill,  writing  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  spoke  of  the  patent  of 
the  Metropolitan  as  one  reason  which  had  made  him  hesitate 
in  his  acceptance  of  the  see  which  he  held. 

"  It  shows,"  he  said,  "  how  loosely  these  matters  are  managed, 
that  both  the  Archbishop,  and  the  Government,  I  mean  the 
officials  at  the  Colonial  Office,  knew  nothing  about  that 
formidable  visitation  clause,  until  I  called  their  attention  to 
it.  The  Archbishop  said  that  there  was  no  court  in  Avhich 
this  Metropolitical  jurisdiction  could  be  inforced,  and  Mr. 
Labouchere  and  others  at  the  Colonial  Office  told  me  that 
if  the  Metropolitan  interfered  I  could  simph^  upset  all  he 
had  done,  as  soon  as  he  left  my  diocese. 

"  But  there  is  another  important  point  connected  with  this 
question,  and  on  which  I  confess  it  seems  to  me  you  have 
rather  conceded  too  much,  by  your  circulating  the  Metro- 
politan's opinion  on  your  doctrine It  seems  to 

me  of  the  utmost  consequence  that  we  should  not  in  any 
way  admit  the  principle  that  the  Metropolitan  is  episcopus 
episcoporiun.  If  one  of  my  clergy  presented  me  to  the 
Metropolitan,  I  should  decline  submitting  to  any  irregular 
semi-official  proceeding,  and  I  should  respectfully  inform 
the  Metropolitan  that  his  opinion  of  my  sermons  or  acts 
was  no  concern  of  mine  unless  he  should  proceed  by  a 
regular  process,  and  issue  a  final  sentence  such  as  would 
form  the  ground  for  appeal  to  an  ecclesiastical  court 
at  home.  If  our  clergy  are  to  be  presenting  us  to  the 
Metropolitan  whenever  we  offend  them,  or  they  differ  from 
our  views  and  acts,  and  we  admit  the  right  of  another 
Bishop,  because  he  is  the  Metropolitan  of  the  Province,  to 
censure  us  according  to  the  standard  of  his  own  private 
opinion,  we  are  placed  wholly  in  a  false  position.  If  he 
has  not  a  legally  constituted  court  to  try  us  in,  that  is  his 
business,  not  ours  ;  but  that  we  should  be  placed  at  the 
mercy  of  the  individual  opinion  of  a  IMetropolitan  is  contrar}- 
to  all  ecclesiastical  law. 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       339 

"  It  is  difficult,  perhaps,  to  say  what  a  MetropoHtan  ought  to- 
do.  Still,  we  must  make  him  understand  that,  unless  we  our- 
selves break  the  ecclesiastical  laws  of  England,  and  commit 
deeds  or  maintain  doctrines  that  would  be  legal  offences  in 
England,  he  has  no  more  right  to  give  us  his  personal 
opinions  as  a  judicial  sentence  upon  us  than  we  have  to 
pass  a  sentence  upon  him.  I  wonder  how  the  Bishops  of 
Exeter  and  Oxford  would  treat  an  extra-judicial  opinion 
of  the  Primate  on  their  doctrine.  I  speak  my  mind  to  you 
freely,  because  I  do  not  see  where  this  interference  is  to 
end,  if  we  admit  it.  .  .  .  Closely  connected  with  all  these 
questions  is  that  to  which  you  refer — what  is  our  proper 
title  as  a  Church  here  .^  As  you  will  observe,  in  our  confer- 
ence the  description  taken  from  the  Capetown  proceedings 
was  proposed  ;  but  I  objected  to  it,  and  it  was  altered. 
Most  certainly  we  are  here  as  Bishops  of  the  Church  of 
England  ;  our  clergy  are  clergymen  of  the  United  Church 
of  England  and  Ireland,  and  take  oaths  both  of  allegiance 
and  supremacy.  If  we  were  merely  Bishops  of  the  '  Catholic 
Church,'  our  ordination  would  (as  in  the  case  of  the 
American  and  Scotch  Bishops)  not  make  men  presbyters 
of  the  English  Church.  We  are  bound  by  ordination  vows 
(as  are  all  our  clergy)  to  observe  the  laws  and  use  the 
Liturgy  of  the  Church  of  England. 

"  It  is  curious  how  some  of  these  men,  on  points  which  fall  in 
with  their  views,  will  insist  on  the  most  rigid  adherence  to 
Anglican  customs ;  but  in  reality  they  are  longing  for 
developement.  A  South  African  Church  Catholic  might 
(especially  with  the  aid  of  three  more  Bishops  who  should 
be  free  from  the  fetters  of  the  Queen's  supremacy,  &;c.)  set 
an  example  to  the  whole  Church  of  restoration.  Who 
knows  what  ancient  customs,  vestments,  and  other  Catholic 
practices  (confession,  e.g.,  to  which  I  hear  there  is  a  strong 
tendency  in  a  neighbouring  diocese)  might  not  be  revived, 
if  only  wc  could  forget  that  we  are  an  integral  part  of  the 
Church  of  England  ?  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  Tractarian 
party,  feeling  that  in  England  the  battle  cannot  be  fought 
with    success,    have    been    for    some    time    looking  to  the 

z  2 


340  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  viil 

colonies  as  the  field  where  they  might  establish  practices 
which  would  ultimately  react  on  England.  This  has  been 
my  conviction  for  some  years  ;  and  it  was  this  that  made 
me  feel  so  strongly  the  importance  of  a  colonial  bishopric 
at  the  present  crisis,  that  I  felt  it  would  be  a  dereliction  of 
duty  to  decline  the  office. 
"  Though  I  consider  the  influence  of  the  Christian  \ao<i 
should  be  co-extensive  with  the  Church,  I  prefer,  myself, 
voting  by  orders.  But  to  say,  as  the  Metropolitan  does, 
that  there  is  no  representation  of  the  Church  because  it  is 
not  as  he  thinks  right,  is  merely  to  say  that,  if  your 
Council  assumes  the  powers  which  he  does  for  his  Capetown 
Synod,  he  will  object.  But  the  Church  is  represented  in 
such  manner  as  you  think  best  suited  for  your  guidance 
in  the  exercise  of  those  functions  which  belong  to  you, 
and  with  which  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  has  no  right  to 
interfere,  unless  you  overstep  the  bounds  of  English 
ecclesiastical  law  ;  and  this  is  all  that  concerns  you.  The 
obedience  we  owe  to  the  Metropolitan  is  simply  canonical 
obedience — '  all  due  obedience.'  It  is  so  in  the  case  of  a 
clergyman  and  his  Bishop,  much  more  in  that  of  a  Bishop 
and  his  Metropolitan." 

It  would  not  be  possible  to  put  into  clearer  words  than 
these  the  indispensable  need  of  maintaining  the  right  of 
appeal  from  any  ecclesiastical  tribunal  in  Southern  Africa  to 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  (not,  as  Bishop  Gray  after- 
wards professed  to  grant  as  a  favour,  in  his  private  capacity, 
but)  as  presiding  by  his  judge  in  the  Court  of  Arches,  from  < 
which  an  appeal  lies  directly  to  the  Crown.  The  idea  of  a 
South  African  Church  in  which  an  appeal  to  the  Sovereign  in 
Council  should  be  barred  by  any  Bishop  or  priest  is  sum- 
marily and  even  indignantly  cast  aside.  In  the  same  spirit 
Bishop  Cotterill  writes,  some  months  later  : — 

"  With  respect  to  the  Bishop  of  Capetown's  jurisdiction  over 
your   outlying  parts,   I   feel  certain    (as  far  as    I   can   feel     I 


i£63.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       341 

certain  about  a  body  so  heterogeneous  as  the  S.P.G.)  that, 
if  you  protest,  they  must  place  the  mission  under  you. 
They  acknowledge — speaking  in  an  under-whisper — the 
monstrous  insolence  (I  cannot  call  it  by  a  milder  term)  of 
the  claims  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown.  He  has  tried  the 
same  thing  with  myself  and  the  Orange  Free  State,  declaring 
it  was  on  his  conscience  and  I  know  not  what  besides.  The 
S.P.G.  have,  however,  put  in  my  hands  the  appointment  of  a 
clergyman  there,  pending  the  question  as  to  the  appointment 
of  a  Bishop. 
"  His  claim  is  most  preposterous  and  absurd.  On  the  ground 
of  a  patent  derived  from  the  Queen,  he  assumes  a  right 
over  no  one  knows  what  amount  of  territory  beyond  the 
British  dominions.  We  must,  in  a  spirit  of  love  and  meek- 
ness, but  with  much  firmness,  resist  his  claims.  He  is 
Bishop  of  Capetown,  and,  as  the  Metropolitan,  has  certain 
precedence  and  due  reverence  and  obedience  according  to 
law.  But  we  must  stand  on  the  position  that  our  episcopal 
rights  and  authority  are  as  good  as  his.  The  new  Bishop 
of  St.  Helena  is  not,  I  hope,  any  more  disposed  than  we 
are  to  co-operate  in  such  claims  on  his  part.  At  all  events, 
let  us  be  firm,  and  we  shall  prevent  evils  of  a  most  serious 
character," 

In  spite  of  all  this,  at  the  time  of  the  so-called  trial  of  the 
Bishop  of  Natal,  Dr.  Cotterill  had  no  hesitation  in  sitting  as 
an  assessor  to  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  along  with  the  Bishop 
of  the  Orange  Free  State — in  other  words,  with  a  Bishop  who, 
if  he  had  any  see  at  all,  had  one  which  lay  beyond  the  borders 
of  British  territory.  On  December  18,  i860,  he  had  been  of 
a  very  different  mind,  for  on  that  day  he  thus  writes  : — 

"  That  it  is  our  dut)'  to  aid  in  the  consecration  of  the  new 
Bishop  of  the  Zambesi  Mission,  I  certainly  think.  .  .  .  But 
the  question  as  to  his  seat  in  a  Provincial  Synod  is  quite 
a  different  one.  As  at  present  advised,  I  am  strongly  of  opin- 
ion that  it  is  contrary  to  the  most  fundamental  prhiciples 


342  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

of  our   Church   system  to  recognise  any  right   to  form   a 
province  consisting  of  dioceses  in  different  dominions." 

We  have  seen  that  it  was  the  deep  longing  to  take  part  in 
missionary  work,  if  he  might  be  permitted  to  do  so,  which 
determined  Dr.  Colenso  to  accept  the  offer  of  the  see  of 
Natal.  The  same  desire  led  him,  as  we  have  seen,^  to  think 
seriously  of  devoting  himself  to  the  same  work  in  regions 
where  the  ground  was  still  altogether  unbroken.  To  carry 
out  this  plan  he  had  already  taken  the  preliminary  steps, 
when  Bishop  Cotterill,  then  in  England,  wrote  the  following 
letter,  urging  upon  him  the  very  consideration,  for  acting 
upon  which,  later  on,  the  Bishop  of  Natal  incurred  his  strong 
reprobation  : — 

"  The  Bishop  of  London  informs  me  that  you  have  sent  to 
the  Colonial  Bishops'  trustees  a  proposal  that  you  should 
resign  your  present  see,  and  become  a  missionary  Bishop. 
He  tells  me  that  you  have  been  informed  in  reply  that 
nothing  is  settled  respecting  the  missionary  Bishops.  He, 
with  many  others  of  the  English  Bishops,  feels  very  strongly 
the  importance  of  more  consideration  of  the  question  before 
the  English  Church  is  committed  to  a  course  of  action. 

"  But,  independently  of  this,  I  sincerely  trust  that  you  will 
yourself  consider  well  whether  it  is  desirable  for  you  to 
leave  your  present  post.  My  own  feeling  is  very  strongly 
that  the  position  you  there  occupy  is  one  of  great  im- 
portance to  the  interests  of  the  colonial  Church  ;  and  the 
fact  that  you  have  met  with  difficulties  from  your  Tracta- 
rian  clergy  makes  it  all  the  more  necessary  that  you 
should  remain  at  your  post.  Besides  this,  you  have,  I 
trust,  gained,  after  many  struggles,  the  confidence  of  your 
laity  ;  and  I  have  no  doubt  that,  by  God's  blessing,  all  the 
difficulties  you  have  to  contend  with  will  confirm  their 
affection  for  you,  and  their  reliance  upon  you. 

"  To  leave  them  to  such  a  Bishop  as  might  be  appointed  your 
successor  (especially  by  the  present  Colonial  Minister) 
1  See  p.  117. 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      343 

would  be  a  serious  injury  to  your  diocese ;  and  the  results 
might  be  most  serious.  Suppose,  for  example,  that  your 
present  Archdeacon  should  be  appointed  (and  I  suppose 
great  exertions  would  be  made  by  the  Bishop  of  Oxford 
and  others  to  obtain  the  appointment  of  him, — no  doubt 
heaven  and  earth  would  be  moved  to  have  one  like-minded 
with  him  appointed),  consider  what  a  discouragement  it 
would  be  to  the  sound-minded  laity.  Do,  my  dear  brother, 
consider  this,  and  do  not  think  of  forsaking  your  post.  As 
regards  myself  also  I  feel,  so  long  as  you  are  at  Natal,  we 
two  can  prevent  any  serious  amount  of  mischief  that  might 
proceed  from  other  sources.  But  if  you  go  to  native  work, 
and  are  no  longer  at  your  present  post,  I  may  stand  quite 
alone  in  all  questions  that  affect  the  colonial  part  of  our 
Church  work,  and  with  a  strong  body  of  clergy  in  my  own 
diocese  not  sympathising  with  me  I  should  have  a  harder  ^ 
battle  than  ever  to  fight.  I  can  assure  you  that  on  more 
than  one  point  your  action  {e.g.  in  your  Conference  and 
Council)  has  helped  me. 
"  I  earnestly  trust  that  even  since  you  sent  in  your  proposal 
to  the  Colonial  Bishops'  trustees  you  may  have  considered 
these  things,  and  felt  the  importance  of  remaining." 

In  another  letter  he  expresses  himself  even  more  strongly 
on  the  pretensions  of  Bishop  Gray  to  the  possession  of  some- 
thing like  autocratic  power. 

"  He  declares  that  his  conscience  is  burdened  with  those  parts 
which  formerly  belonged  to  his  diocese,  and  authority  over 
which  he  received  from  the  Church,  not  from  the  Crown. 
He  forgets  (i)  that  he  resigned  the  see  for  subdivision  ; 
(2)  that  if  the  Orange  Free  State,  e.g.,  had  still  been  British 
dominion,  it  most  assuredly  would  not  have  been  in  the 
diocese  of  Capetown  ;  (3)  that  from  the  Church  he  received 
consecration  to  the  episcopal  office  of  the  see  of  Capetown, 
but  that  the  territorial  limits  are  fixed  by  the  Crown. 

"  I  acknowledge  to  you  that  his  ambition  (I  can  call  it  nothing 
else),  and  the  very  slight  disguise  with  which  he  now  thinks 
it  necessary  to  conceal  it,  amazes  me  and  makes  me  more 


344  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

resolved  than  ever  to  withstand  his  assumptions.  He  has 
evidently  a  gigantic  scheme  for  extending  his  province  up 
to  the  equator,  and  creating  a  host  of  Bishops  dependent 
on  himself.  He  relies  on  you,  I  can  see,  to  act  with  him. 
If  you  do  so,  he  will  be  independent  of  me,  as  I  imagine 
the  Bishop  of  St.  Helena  has  not  strength  of  character 
enough  to  resist  him." 

In  a  later  letter  he  again  recurs  to  the  same  subject : — 

''  I  think  you  will  be  quite  right  in  insisting  on  independence 
of  Capetown  as  soon  as  you  are  out  of  British  dominions. 
The  claims  which  some  put  forth  of  having  a  number  of 
native  Churches  in  other  nations  subordinate  to  a  Metro- 
politan in  British  dominions,  seems  to  me  a  most  serious 
invasion  of  the  liberties  of  particular  and  national  Churches." 

Lastly,  he  asserts  that  the  metropolitical  claims  of  the  Bishop 
of  Capetown  are  altogether  unsubstantial  (1861). 

"  The  metropolitical  power  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  or  of 
any  Bishop  on  whom  the  title  is  conferred  by  the  Queen's 
patent,  may  seem  something  on  paper  ;  but  in  reality  it  is 
nothing.  Such  is  the  opinion  of  the  best  Church  lawyers 
whom  I  consulted  in  England.  .  .  .  The  supposition 
that  he  is  under  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  as  Bishop, 
and  not  as  Metropolitan,  is  ridiculous  ;  for  what  is  the  mean- 
ing of  our  having  an  appeal  from  Capetown  to  Canterbury, 
in  case  of  his  sitting  in  judgement  upon  us  .''  Would  not  his 
judgement  on  one  of  the  Bishops  of  his  so-called  province 
be  his  act  as  Metropolitan  ?  ...  It  is  amusing  enough, 
j  These  High  Churchmen  are  hot  against  Erastianism  and 
\  the  Queen's  supremacy,  when  it  is  against  them  ;  but  when 
it  makes  a  Metropolitan  to  their  taste,  it  is  a  good  card 
to  play,  for  this  metropolitical  power  in  the  colonial  Church 
rests  on  nothing  but  the  Queen's  patent.  It  is  not  like 
episcopal  powers  which  come  from  the  Church.  Con- 
sistent High  Churchmen  in  England  do  not  like  it.  They 
had   much   rather  that   provincial   synodical  action  should 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       345 

regulate  all  these  questions.  As  regards  the  oath,  on  which 
those  lawyers,  R.  Palmer  and  Phillimore,  with  the  Bishop 
of  Capetown  rely,  you  will  see  what  O'Malley  says  ;  and  in 
foro  conscientice,  in  which  alone,  of  course,  such  an  oath  is 
of  any  force,  it  is  the  very  question  at  issue,  what  is  due 
reverence  and  obedience. 

"  The  Bishop  of  Capetown  and  his  party  are  very  fond  of 
decrying  the  exercise  of  the  Archbishop's  authority,  as  a 
quasi-papal  interference  with  the  rights  of  Metropolitans. 
They  forget  that  the  real  question  is  between  arbitrary 
power,  such  as  a  colonial  Metropolitan  might  think  fit  to 
exercise,  and  power  limited  and  directed  by  English  law, 
such  as  an  English  Archbishop's  would  be.     Wv"  know  that 

■  in  going  to  Canterbury  we  go  to  England,  and  to  the  liberty 
of  thought  and  of  conscience  which  England  represents  and 
protects.  We  have  no  such  assurance  in  going  to  Cape- 
town. I  do  not  speak  of  the  individual  Bishop,  so  much  as 
of  the  fact  that  his  court  has  no  legal  existence,  and  no  law 
to  guide  it  or  control  it." 

Yet,  three  years  later.  Bishop  Cotterill  took  his  seat  in  such 
an  unsubstantial  court;  and  then,  in  a  tribunal  which  had  no 
legal  existence  and  no  law  to  guide  and  control  it,  he  took  it 
on  himself  to  pass  sentence  of  condemnation  on  the  Bishop  of 
Natal,  and  to  declare  him,  not  merely  deprived  of  spiritual 
authority,  but  deposed  from  the  see  of  Natal.  It  is  a  melan- 
choly history  ;  but  it  shows  us  how  differences  in  the  point 
of  view  may  modify  or  change  the  thoughts  and  conclusions 
of  any  man.  If  we  think  we  stand,  it  will  be  well  to  take 
heed  lest  we  fall. 

It  is  thus  plain  that  the  working  and  the  possible  results  of 
Bishop  Gray's  theory  of  the  South  African  Church  had  not  in 
1858  much  to  commend  them  in  the  eyes  of  Bishop  Cotterill. 
To  him  the  claims  of  the  Metropolitan  seemed  fraught  with 
a  danger,  which  would  only  increase  as  the  limits  of  the 
Church  of  South  Africa  were  gradually  pushed  forward  to  the 


346  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

equator.  To  these  fears  he  had  given  expression  after  the 
appearance  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal's  Comnientary  on  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  ;  and  he  had  regretted  what  seemed  to 
him  an  ill-judged  concession,  when  Bishop  Colenso  allowed 
his  work  to  be  examined  by  Bishop  Gray. 

But  subsequent  events  led  him  to  change  his  tone  and  shift 
his  ground  altogether  ;  and  these  events,  it  is  unnecessary  to 
say,  arose  solely  out  of  the  publication  of  the  Bishop's  criticisms 
on  the  Pentateuch.  It  is  true  that  in  his  Charge  delivered  in  the 
cathedral  church  of  Grahamstown,  in  1S64,  Bishop  Cotterill 
speaks  of  his  once  honoured  and  loved  brother  as  one  who  had 
"  denied  the  Lord "  (page  30) ;  but  these  words  manifestly 
resolve  themselves  into  the  statement  made  a  few  lines  lower 
down,  that  the  publication  of  his  work  on  the  Pentateuch  was 
"the  most  daring  attack  on  the  authority  of  God's  Word,  and 
of  our  Divine  Master,  that  has  ever  been  made  in  ancient  or 
modern  times  by  one  invested  with  the  responsibilities  of  the 
episcopal  office."  If  then  Bishop  Colenso  had  "  denied  the 
Lord  "  and  "attacked  His  authority,"  it  was  only  by  question- 
ing whether  references  to  "  Moses  "  or  to  "  David  "  from  the 
lips  of  our  Lord  implied  and  guaranteed  the  authenticity 
of  the  Pentateuch,  or  the  Books  of  Kings,  or  the  Psalms. 
Certainly  he  had  done  so  in  no  other  way  ;  and  the  question 
thus  raised  was  one  which  should  have  been  referred  on  its 
merits  in  the  usual  course  to  the  Sovereign  in  Council.  But 
the  Churchmanship  of  South  Africa  had,  it  seems,  taken 
alarm  ;  and  from  the  judgement  in  the  Williams-Wilson  case 
the  inference  had  been  drawn  that  the  Court  of  Final  Appeal 
was  prepared  to  strain  every  nerve  so  to  interpret  or  to  wrest 
the  law  as  to  insure  impunity  for  doubters  and  heretics  of 
every  sort,  to  the  confusion  of  all  who  remained  true  to  the 
faith  of  what  they  spoke  of  as  the  Church.  The  issue  was  a 
plain  one.  The  Bishop  of  Natal  had  beyond  doubt  declared 
his  opinion  that  many  of  the  narratives  in  the  Pentateuch  v/ere 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       347 

not  records  of  historical  facts  ;  that  some,  at  least,  of  the  laws 
bearing  the  name  of  Moses,  and  claiming  to  be  imposed  by 
Divine  authority,  were  unjust  ;  that  the  Levitical  system  set 
forth  in  these  books  was  of  very  much  later  growth,  much 
of  it  belonging  to  the  age  of  the  Babylonian  Captivity  ;  and 
therefore  that  the  Pentateuch  was  an  agglomerate  of  records, 
put  together  at  various  times  by  different  annalists,  and  thus 
could  not  as  a  whole  be  regarded  as  a  genuine  contemporary 
history. 

The  only  question  calling  for  consideration  was  whether  the 
avowal  of  these  opinions  contravened  the  declarations  of  the 
Church  of  England.  These  declarations  could  be  found  only 
in  the  sixth  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  ;  and  of  the  antJiority 
of  the  Holy  Scriptures  it  must  be  noted  that  this  Article  says 
nothing.  It  speaks  only  of  their  sufficiency,  and  this  sufficiency 
is  declared  to  rest  on  the  fact  that  they  contain  all  things 
necessary  to  salvation  ;  the  only  one  inference  drawn  from 
this  fact  being  that  anything  not  found  in  those  books,  or 
capable  of  being  proved  (in  what  degree,  or  to  whose  satisfac- 
tion, it  does  not  say)  by  them,  is  not  to  be  imposed  upon  any  one 
as  an  article  of  the  faith,  or  be  thought  requisite  or  necessary 
to  salvation  (this  last  term  also  being  left  undefined).  But  if 
salvation  be,  as  undoubtedly  it  must  be,  taken  to  denote  the 
process  of  healing  from  the  wounds,  and  deliverance  from  the 
power,  of  sin,  then  this  Article  asserts  nothing  more  and  nothing 
less  than  that  the  Holy  Scriptures  (and  by  this  term  are  meant 
the  canonical  books  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments)  contain 
all  that  is  needful  for  the  perfecting  of  this  healing,  strengthen- 
ing, life-establishing  process,  and  that  no  burden  of  propositions 
not  found  in  them  is  to  be  imposed  on  the  consciences  of  any, 
whether  clergy  or  laymen.  It  may  be  most  safely  said  that 
not  only  had  the  Bishop  of  Natal  not  impugned  either  of 
these  declarations,  but  that  he  had  not  uttered  a  single  word 
that  implied   even   the   remotest  fancy  of  questioning  either. 


34S  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  viil 

Nor  would  it  have  been  possible  for  his  opponents  to  take- 
refuge  in  the  plea  that  he  had  denied  or  doubted  the 
canonicity  of  any  of  these  books. 

In  truth  this  controversy  on  the  subject  of  canonicity  is 
now,  and  has  been  ever  since  the  Canon  was  closed,  a  mere 
waste  of  breath  and  beating  of  the  air.  The  term  canonicity 
or  canonical  states  nothing  more  than  an  historical  fact. 
It  states  nothing  more  than  that  at  a  certain  date  the  societies 
of  Eastern  and  Western  Christendom  agreed  to  look  upon 
certain  books  as  "  containing  all  things  necessary  to  salva- 
tion," and  on  certain  others  as  furnishing  examples  of  life,  and 
instruction  of  manners,  but  as  not  to  be  cited  in  support  of 
propositions  not  found  in  the  other  books.  The  fact  that 
certain  other  books  had  for  a  long  or  short  time  previously 
been  regarded  with  grave  doubts,  and  in  many  quarters 
rejected,  ceased  after  the  closing  of  the  Canon  to  have  any 
significance.  It  was  strictly  within  the  functions  of  Greek  and 
Latin  Christendom  to  set  its  seal  on  any  set  of  writings  as 
containing  whatever  might  be  most  useful  for  the  spiritual 
instruction,  growth,  and  strength  of  Christian  men  ;  and 
most  assuredly  it  never  entered  into  the  Bishop  of  Natal's 
thoughts  to  call  this  right  into  question.  The  one  point  was 
whether  books  containing,  admittedly,  all  things  necessary  to 
salvation  might  not  also  contain  much  unhistorical  matter, 
and  much  that  might  be  of  dubious  character  as  ethical  or 
spiritual  philosophy,  many  expressions  falling  from  the  lips 
of  men  whose  moral  perceptions  were  more  or  less  weak. 
The  case  might  be  drawn  even  more  strongly  ;  but  it  is,  and 
was,  absolutely  certain  that  the  Judicial  Committee  would 
refuse  to  listen  to  charges  brought  against  any  clergyman  for 
doubting  whether  Jael  was  blessed  in  her  murder  of  Sisera 
merely  because  in  the  excitement  of  victory  Deborah  is  re- 
presented as  declaring  her  so  to  be.  It  is  not  less  certain 
that  every  one  of  the  Bishop's  criticisms  falls  under  the  same 


j863.      consequences  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       349 

<:ategory,  and  that  for  none  of  them  could  his  opponents  have 
obtained  his  condemnation.  In  fact  from  no  part  of  his 
writings,  probably,  could  a  summary  so  trenchant  and  com- 
plete of  the  unnecessary  and  unimportant  matter  in  the 
Pentateuch  be  drawn  as  that  which  has  been  already  cited 
from  the  Charge  of  Bishop  Thirlwall,  of  St.  David's.^ 

This  issue,  the  only  one  involved  in  his  volumes  on  the 
Pentateuch,  the  Bishop  would  most  gladly  and  thankfully 
have  seen  tried  on  its  merits  ;  and  there  is  not  the  least 
doubt  that  he  would  have  consented  to  its  being  submitted 
in  the  first  instance  to  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  as  Metro- 
politan, if  Bishop  Gray  had  told  him  at  the  outset  that  the 
trial  should  follow  precisely  the  course  which  it  would  take  if 
the  suit  had  been  instituted  against  any  clergyman  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  England.  But  it  was  indispensable 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  South  African  Church  that  the 
decision  of  the  Metropolitan  of  Capetown  should  be  final  ; 
and  final  he  insisted  that  it  must  be,  although  he  proposed  to 
allow  to  the  defendant,  or  even  to  encourage,  a  reference  to 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  personally,  granting  this  strictly 
as  of  grace  or  favour  under  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the 
case,  and  in  no  w^ay  as  of  right.  In  taking  this  course  Bishop 
Gray  was  actuated  by  two  motives  ;  the  one  being  the  resolu- 
tion not  to  accept,  in  cases  which  he  deemed  spiritual,  the 
intervention  of  a  non-ecclesiastical  court  ;  the  other  the  fear, 
amounting  morally  to  conviction,  that  the  Sovereign  in 
Council  would  give  no  judgement  but  one  of  acquittal.  His 
position,  therefore,  could,  it  is  obvious,  be  maintained  only  by 
insisting  that  the  Church  of  South  Africa  must  in  South 
Africa  hear  and  decide  its  own  causes,  Avhatever  troubles 
might  arise  in  consequence  in  reference  to  temporalities. 
The  alarm  felt  for  what  was  regarded  as  the  merely  negative 
and    destructive    criticism  of  the    Bishop    of  Natal  was,  no 

^  See  p.  310. 


350  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

doubt,  genuine  ;  and  we  may  give  Bishop  Gray  and  his  col- 
leagues credit  for  thinking  that  the  danger  was  not  wholly 
confined  to  the  side  of  the  so-called  rationalistic  school.  The 
Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  had  acquired,  in 
greater  or  less  degree,  the  reputation  of  dealing  out  even- 
handed  justice,  without  respect  of  parties  ;  and  the  Synod  of 
Capetown  had  no  special  wish  to  invite,  or  to  submit  to, 
judgements  which  might  not  square  with  their  own  convic- 
tions. Archdeacon  Denison,  it  is  true,  had  defeated  his 
assailants  by  virtue  of  merely  technical  objections  ;  but  this 
imperfect  victory  was  a  poor  set-off  against  the  decided  suc- 
cess achieved  by  Mr.  Long  in  his  appeal  from  the  Bishop  of 
Capetown,  and  still  more  against  the  judgements  which  closed 
the  case  of  Essays  and  Reviews,  and  allowed  to  Mr.  Gorham's 
teaching  a  place  as  definite  as  that  which  was  conceded  to 
the  teaching  of  Dr.  Phillpotts,  Bishop  of  Exeter. 

Unless,  then.  Bishop  Cotterill  could  make  up  his  mind  to 
submit  to  the  Queen  in  Council,  as  the  ultimate  court  of 
appeal  in  all  ecclesiastical  causes,  a  change  of  front  had 
become  imperatively  necessary,  and  this  change  was  made 
with  sufficient  completeness  in  his  Charge  of  1864.  His 
examination  of  the  whole  subject  is,  it  must  be  admitted, 
marked  by  great  ability  ;  but  his  perceptions  had  been  not 
less  clear  and  vivid  in  1S58  on  the  other  side.  All  this,  how- 
ever, was  now  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  matter  for  present 
consideration  was  the  actual  condition  of  the  Church  of  South 
Africa.  Had  it  been,  or  was  it  now,  "a  society  lawfully 
established  by  the  authority  of  the  Sovereign,  governed  by 
rules  which  are  the  laws  of  the  Sovereign,  and  with  eccle- 
siastical tribunals  which  are  the  courts  of  the  Sovereign  "  .■• 
The  Sovereign  in  Council  had  decided  that 

'•  whatever   other   value  the   letters  patent   [of   the    Bishops] 
possess,   in   this  verj-  point    of    forming    the    Bishops    and 


1863.       CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      351 

clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  here  into  an  organized 
body  they  have  no  legal  force.  It  followed  that  'the 
supremacy  of  the  Sovereign  in  legislating  for  the  Church  is 
not  in  exercise  here,'  and  again,  '  that  the  tribunals  for 
determining  whether  these  rules  are  violated  are  not  here 
courts  of  the  Sovereign  '  ;  in  other  words,  that  the  judicial 
supremacy  of  the  Sovereign  in  the  Church  has  no  force  in 
our  communion." 

But  what  should  be  the  extent  of  the  organic  disconnexion, 
since  disconnexion  there  must  be? 

"We  must  not,"  said  Bishop  Cotterill,  "allow  our  freedom 
from  external  restraints  to  lead  us  into  paths  of  our  own. 
We  must  not  suffer  those  who  come  to  us  from  England, 
attached  to  the  Church  of  their  fathers,  to  feel  that  in  South 
Africa  they  are  brought  into  a  different  atmosphere,  and 
that  we  avail  ourselves  of  our  disconnexion  from  the  State 
to  imprint  some  new  features  upon  the  Church  according  to 
our  own  particular  views  of  that  which  is  expedient  for  its 
welfare.  The  Englishman  who  leaves  his  native  land  does 
not  carry  with  him  the  exact  form  of  its  civil  polity ;  .  .  .  . 
but  he  may  justly  expect  to  find  here  the  same  constitu- 
tional principles,  the  same  civil  liberty,  and,  though  under 
different  laws,  the  same  substantial  rights  of  a  British 
subject." 

But,  he  says,  the  question  has  arisen,  how  in  things  eccle- 
siastical the  substantial  rights  of  the  English  clergy  could  be 
maintained  in  South  Africa.  At  present,  apart  from  the 
"  unhappy  exception  "  of  Bishop  Colcnso,  there  might  be 
much  harmony,  or  practical  unanimity,  in  the  province  which 
might  some  day  become  a  patriarchate.  But  men  who  agreed 
with  Mr.  Long,  or  with  Mr.  Gorham,  might,  if  they  came 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  fear,  and 
have  just  cause  to  fear,  that  they  might  find  themselves  sooner 
or  later  under  sentence  of  condemnation  for  offences  which  in 
England  would  not  be  offences  at  all.      The  tendenc}^  of  the 


352  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 


Judicial  Committee  seemed  to  be  to  cast  a  shield  over  unsound 
theology  generally.  The  deprivation  of  Mr.  Voysey  was, 
indeed,  still  a  thing  of  the  future  ;  but  without  this  Bishop 
Cotterill  felt  it 

"  impossible  to  conceal  from  our  minds  the  unwelcome  fact 
that  the  relation  of  the  State  to  the  Church  in  England, 
to  which,  undoubtedly,  in  past  generations  we  owe  so  much, 
and  which  we  are  still  fully  convinced  is  in  itself  the 
ordinance  of  God,  is  yet  now,  through  the  peculiar  nature 
of  its  exercise  in  the  present  day,  threatening  to  enfeeble 
the  testimony  borne  by  the  Established  Church  to  the  faith 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ."  ^ 

This  confession  was  no  doubt  sincere,  as  no  doubt  also 
the  expressions  of  his  letters  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal  six 
years  before  had  also  been  sincere.  But  his  argument  was 
vitiated  by  the  common  blot  of  undefined  terms.  For  him  the 
teaching  of  Mr.  Gorham  or  Mr.  Long  would  be  opposed  only 
in  a  less  degree  than  that  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  "  to  the  faith 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

In  short,  what  is  this  faith  }  Is  it  a  living  principle,  or  is 
it  a  multitude  of  propositions  for  which  any  one  or  every  one 
may  assume  the  sanction  of  this  august  title  .-'  Is  it  that  vast 
body  of  conceptions,  always  fluctuating,  always  undergoing 
modifications  amounting  in  the  end  to  changes  in  kind,  which 
cluster  around  the  undefined  terms,  salvation,  redemption,  in- 
spiration, atonement,  election,  propitiation,  justification,  sacrifice, 
and  the  rest,  terms  which  too  often  serve  as  weapons  in  the 
ecclesiastical  armoury  for  carrying  on  warfare  not  sanctioned 
seemingly  by  Him  for  whose  cause  they  profess  to  be  fight- 
ing .''  The  Church  of  South  Africa  would  have  done  v/ell  to 
define  these  terms  at  starting  ;  and  then  the  followers  of  Calvin 
or   Melanchthon,  of  Jeremy  Taylor  or   Hugh  Peters,   might 

^  P.  17- 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       353 


have  satisfied  themselves  as  to  the  sort  of  treatment  which 
they  might  expect  to  receive  in  that  Church.  But  the 
definition  of  terms  had  become  a  task  not  very  congenial 
to  Bishop  Cotterill.  He  had  no  longer  any  liking  for  the 
system  which  so  construed  the  letter  of  doctrinal  standards 
"as  to  give  every  possible  advantage  to  the  accused  "  (p.  18). 
He  had  discovered  in  the  interval  since  1858  that 

"  it  needs  no  argument  to  show  that,  although  such  a  use  of 
the  standards  of  the  Church  may  be  good  in  law,  its  effect 
must  be  that  the  sanction  of  these  standards  will  be  given 
to  very  unsound  theology." 

The  language  of  Bishop  Cotterill  is  here  not  '  quite  in- 
genuous. His  sentence  might  seem  at  first  sight  to  imply 
a  desire  for  what  he  would  have  called  orthodox  judgement 
given  at  the  cost  of  a  little,  or  a  good  deal  of,  injustice  ;  that 
in  short,  it  might  be  well  for  the  Church  if  the  practice  of  the 
Court  of  Appeal  deflected  slightly  in  the  direction  favoured 
by  Dominic  or  Torquemada.  But  while  we  acquit  Bishop 
Cotterill  of  entertaining  such  thoughts  as  these,  we  may  fairly 
charge  him  with  one-sidedness  in  this  statement.  The  ques- 
tion is  one  not  of  the  unsound  theology  of  any  given  writer, 
but  of  the  expressions  in  a  given  Article,  and  of  their  general 
meaning.  It  may  be  true,  or  not  true,  to  say  that  every 
narrative  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  is  throughout 
historical,  that  every  precept  contained  in  those  books  is 
right  and  wholesome,  that  the  descriptions  of  ph}'sical  facts 
are  always  correct,  and  that  the  philosophy  and  theology 
found  in  them  is  always  self-consistent  as  well  as  in  harmony 
with  the  first  principles  of  morality.  But  on  every  one  of 
these  points  the  Sixth  Article  is  absolutely  silent  ;  and  the 
questions  put  to  deacons  at  the  time  of  their  ordering  throw 
no  further  light  upon  them. 

VOL.  I.  A  A 


354  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

In  short,  the  contention  is  for  narrowing  the  Hmits  of 
freedom. 

"  It  is  the  necessary  connexion  by  law,  in  England,  of  the 
spiritual  office  with  the  temporalities,  that  renders  such 
principles  as  are  adopted  in  these  judgements  peculiarly 
oppressive  to  the  Church  there.  That  the  Church  should 
be  constrained,  through  its  union  with  the  State,  to  recog- 
nize as  its  own  ministers  those  who  retain  their  offices  only 
through  the  extreme  leniency  of  such  proceedings  as  are 
adopted  .  ...  is  a  result  which  would  not  only  justify  the 
Church  in  taking  measures,  out  of  its  ordinary  course,  to 
protect  and  vindicate  itself,  but  which  imperatively  demands 
that  it  should  do  so,  unless  it  would  receive  the  sentence 
from  its  Divine  Head,  '  Because  thou  art  lukewarm,  and 
neither  hot  nor  cold,  I  will  spue  thee  out  of  my  mouth.' " 

The  citation  from  the  Apocalypse  is  ominous  indeed.  Here 
are  words  from  a  book  as  to  which  the  opinions  or  judgement 
of  theologians  of  every  age  and  every  school  exhibit  contra- 
dictions as  astounding  as  they  are  innumerable  ;  ^  and  here 
is  Bishop  Cotterill  applying  these  words,  seemingly  on  his 
own  sole  authority,  for  the  repression  of  inquiry  into  the  date 
of  the  prophecies  of  Balaam,  or  of  the  directions  for  the 
planning  and  decorating  of  the  Tabernacle.  No  declaration 
could  be  less  ambiguous  ;  and  it  is  the  declaration  of  a  claim 
to  inforce  on  every  clergyman  (howeyer  it  may  be  with  the 
laity)  the  general  mass  of  propositions  which  are  supposed 
to  formulate  the  opinions  or  the  belief  or  faith  of  the  Church 
of  South  Africa.  It  is  enough  to  say  here  that  such  men  as 
Mr.  Gorham  and  Mr.  Long,  Dean  Stanley  and  Mr.  Bennett, 
Bishop  Wilberforce  and  Bishop  Ryle,  Mr.  Maurice  and  Dr. 
Pusey,  have  all  been  or  are  priests  and  incumbents  in  the 
Church  of  England,  bound  to  tolerate  each  other,  and  no  one 
of  them  regarded  as  having  a  better  title  to  his  position  than 

1  See  p.  289. 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      355 

the  rest, — the  only  point  of  vast  moment  being  this,  that  the 
conceptions  of  Christian  truth  entertained  by  these  men  are 
in  almost  every  particular  radically  divergent.  The  notions 
set  forth  by  Dr.  Pusey  and  Mr.  Maurice  on  the  subjects  of 
sacrifice,  mediation,  redemption,  punishment,  baptism,  and 
many  others,  were,  it  must  again  be  said,  contradictory.  If, 
then,  the  difference  is  to  be  measured  by  considerations  of 
technical  theology,  these  two  men  would  be  professors  of  two 
wholly  different  religions.  But  both  called  themselves  Chris- 
tians. It  is  hard  to  see  how  the  title  can  be  conceded  to 
both  except  by  virtue  of  that  "  class  of  principles,"  which,  in 
the  words  of  Dean  Stanley,  underlie 

"the  sentiments  and  usages  which  have  accumulated  round 
the  forms  of  Christianity, — a  religion,  as  it  were,  behind  the 
religion — which,  however  dimly  expressed,  has  given  them 
whatever  vitality  they  possess."  ^ 

Further,  they  were  both  clergymen  holding  office  in  the 
Church  of  England,  and  holding  it  by  the  same  undoubted 
right.  One  or  other  of  them  the  Church  of  South  Africa  would 
most  assuredly  have  cast  out. 

But  Bishop  Cotterill  could  not,  it  seems,  shake  off  altogether 
the  old  misgivings. 

"  That  theologians  should  be  disposed  at  times  to  over-value 
the  importance  of  traditional  interpretations  of  Divine 
Truth ;  that  sometimes  the  additional  bulwarks  which 
human  wisdom  or,  it  may  be,  human  ignorance,  has  thrown 
up,  should  be  held  by  them  with  as  much  tenacity  as  if  they 
formed  a  part  of  the  Divine  original,  is  no  more  than  the 
analogy  of  human  science  and  its  students  would  lead  us  to 
expect." 

Is  there,  then,  no  danger  in  this  short-sighted  and  irrational 
zeal .-'     Was   not   Bishop  Cotterill,   at  the  moment  when   he 

^  Christian  Itisiiiuiions,  5. 

A  A  2 


356  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

wrote,  full  of  indignation  at  what  he  termed  the  apostasy  of 
his  brother  of  Natal,  who  had  actually  "  denied  the  Lord  "  ?  and 
did  not  the  denial  consist  merely  in  this  that  he  questioned  or 
denied  the  accuracy  or  truthfulness  of  the  story  which  recounts 
the  wanderings  of  the  Israelites  in  the  wilderness,  or  their 
settlement  in  the  land  of  Canaan  ?  Further,  is  not  the  idea  of 
the  value  of  these  narratives  a  bulwark  thrown  up  rather  by 
human  ignorance  than  by  human  wisdom,  and  indeed  not 
worth  the  fighting  about  ?  Was  not  then  Bishop  Cotterill 
doing,  even  as  he  spoke,  the  very  thing  which  he  deprecated 
in  others  ?  He  speaks  indeed  of  Bishop  Colenso  as  having 
"  flagrantly  and  avowedly  contradicted  the  formularies  of  the 
Church ;"  but  if  by  the  Church  he  meant  the  Church  of  England, 
there  is  not  one  of  her  formularies  which  bears  in  the  remotest 
degree  upon  the  subject  ;  and  not  one  single  word  in  the 
Bishop  of  Natal's  work  goes  counter  to  the  language  of  the 
Sixth  Article,  which  alone  deals  with  it.  Dr.  Cotterill  pro- 
fesses to  regard  it  as  impossible  that  Bishop  Colenso  could 
escape  condemnation,  "  even  by  the  lenient  construction  of 
'  temporal  courts '  ; "  but  the  true  nature  of  the  contention  is 
betrayed  by  the  proposition  (here  suppressed,  but  indispens- 
able for  the  right  understanding  of  Bishop  Cotterill's  position) 
that  the  Metropolitan  of  Capetown  and  his  suffragans  were 
debarred  from  seeking  his  condemnation  at  the  hands  of  a 
tribunal  where  they  could  not  fail,  with  adequate  evidence,  to 
secure  it,  by  the  fact  that  they  could  not  resort  to  this  court 
without  compromising  or  betraying  the  spiritual  rights  of  the 
Church  of  South  Africa.  Bishop  Cotterill  was  pronouncing 
judgement  on  himself  and  his  fellow  suffragans  as  maintain- 
ing a  society  or  a  Church  separated  root  and  branch  from  the 
Church  of  England. 

It  thus  becomes  plain  that  the  so-called  trial  of  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  was  a  matter  of  importance,  in  reference  not  only  to 
the  defendant  in  the  case,  but  to  the  interests  of  all  English- 


I 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      357 


men  taking  up  their  abode  in  the  colonies.  It  cannot  be 
insisted  on  too  strongly  that  the  characteristics  peculiar  to 
this  prosecution  were  the  result  of  accident.  The  Bishop  of 
Natal's  books  were  thrown  into  a  form  which  would  render 
them  singularly  galling  to  a  mind  like  that  of  Bishop  Gray. 
Even  where  they  did  not  set  forth  convictions  which  the 
latter  regarded  as  subversive  of  Christianity,  they  treated  the 
question  of  ecclesiastical  order  and  government  as  of  an 
interest  altogether  subordinate  to  the  abiding  and  present 
work  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  By  the  publication  of  the  volumes 
on  the  Pentateuch  the  whole  aspect  of  the  discussion  had 
been  changed  not  so  much  by  the  gravity  of  any  of  the 
results  attained  as  by  the  laying  down  the  principle  that  the 
date,  the  authorship,  the  composition  of  any  given  book  (as 
of  all  books)  are  simply  subjects  for  inquiry.  There  was 
enough  in  the  position  so  taken  up  to  account  for  the 
outburst  of  indignation  and  wrath  in  those  who  believed 
themselves  to  be  members  of  a  practically  infallible  society, 
and  the  possessors  of  an  absolutely  infallible  book.  But 
all  this  was  merely  accidental.  Not  many  years  before, 
utterances  of  a  very  different  kind  had  given  rise  to  fierce 
controversy  in  England,  and  Dr.  Phillpots,  Bishop  of  Exeter, 
had  used  in  reference  to  the  heresies  of  Mr.  Gorham  language 
scarcely  less  vehement  than  that  in  which  Bishop  Gray  de- 
nounced the  method  and  conclusions  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 
There  was,  and  there  is,  no  reason  for  supposing  that  Mr. 
Gorham  would  be  dealt  with  more  leniently  in  Capetown 
than  in  England  ;  but  condemnation  at  Capetown  would 
most  assuredly,  according  to  the  theory  of  Bishop  Gray, 
have  deprived  Mr.  Gorham  of  the  appeal  which  ended  in 
his  victory.  For  the  present,  a  clergyman  who  might  be 
charged,  as  Mr.  Bennett  was  charged,  with  setting  forth  the 
Tridentine  doctrine  of  the  Eucharist,  might  look  with  more 
or  less  confidence  either  to  acquittal  or  to  some  condonation 


358  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

of  his  offence  by  the  MetropoHtan  of  Southern  Africa  ;  but 
times  might  come  when  such  a  man  could  look  for  no  mercy, 
or  even  to  any  fairness  in  his  trial ;  and  for  him  also  there 
would  not  be  that  appeal  to  which  every  clergyman  in 
England  is  entitled.  In  short,  Bishop  Gray  had  rejected 
\h&  fundamental  principle  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  he 
was  resolved  that  no  one  should  have  the  benefit  of  it.  Thus 
determined,  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  see  that  the  firmest 
opposition  to  his  procedure  might  come  from  those  who  had 
no  sympathy  whatever  with  what  was,  or  what  was  supposed 
to  be,  the  theology  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  All  who  felt 
called  upon  to  fight  the  battle  for  the  rights  of  Englishmen 
everywhere  were  regarded  and  spoken  of  as  aiders  and  abettors 
of  Dr.  Colenso  in  the  dissemination  of  an  infidel  theology 
and  philosophy. 

In  the  discussion  which  followed  the  so-called  Capetown 
trial.  Bishop  Gray  strove  always  to  show  that  his  procedure 
insured  full  justice  to  every  one  who  might  be  brought  before 
his  tribunal.  He  never  failed  to  maintain  that  he  had  granted 
to  Bishop  Colenso  whatever  appeal  he  had  a  right  to  claim. 
In  ^  Statement  relating  to  Facts  ivhicJi  have  been  Misiinder- 
stood,'^  in  connexion  with  the  trial.  Bishop  Gray  declares 
that  he  had  given  the  defendant  the  option  of  submitting  the 
case  either  to  the  Archbishop  in  person,  or  to  the  Bishops  of 
the  United  Church  of  England  and  Ireland,  or  to  a  national 
Synod,  including  colonial  Bishops.  The  offer,  he  adds,  was 
declined,  and  the  proposed  alternative  he  pronounces  to  be  an 
impossibility.  From  his  own  point  of  view  it  was  so.  But 
there  is  just  this  to  be  said,  and  we  need  say  nothing  more. 
The  appeal  to  the  Archbishop  in  person,  to  the  Bishops  of  the 
United  Church  of  England  and  Ireland,  to  a  national  Synod 
including  colonial  Bishops,  is  not  an  appeal  to  the  Sovereign 
in  Council,  and  it  is  to  this  appeal  that  every  clergyman 
^  London,  Rivingtons,  1867,  p.  67. 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       359 

holding  office  in  England  is  entitled.  If  it  was  "  impossible" 
for  Dr.  Gray  to  allow  this  appeal,  it  was  not  less  impossible 
for  Dr.  Colenso  to  dispense  with  it. 

If,  therefore,  the  case  was  never  tried  upon  its  merits,  the 
responsibility  for  this,  and  for  the  proceedings  involved  in  the 
attempt  to  carry  out  a  sentence  pronounced  to  be  null  and 
void  in  law,  rests  with  the  Metropolitan  of  the  Church  of 
South  Africa,  and  his  advisers.  The  plain  issue  is  that  Dr. 
Gray  did  not  like  this  appeal,  and  that  in  hindering  it  he 
withstood  the  law  of  the  Church  of  England.  It  becomes 
idle,  therefore,  to  speak  of  any  other  appeals  which  he 
proposed  to  allow  in  its  place. 

To  Dr.  Gray  it  was  thus  a  matter  for  amazement  that  any 
should  presume  to  call  the  legitimacy  of  his  acts  into  question 
and  still  more  that  they  should  do  so  while  they  disclaimed 
sympathy  or  agreement  with  the  views  of  Dr.  Colenso.  Such 
a  position  as  this  was  to  him  unintelligible  ;  and  as  he  could 
not  imagine  it  to  be  sincere,  he  resolved  to  put  the  subscribers 
to  the  Durban  Protest  to  what  Bishop  Colenso  charitably 
describes  as  "  undue  pressure."  These  memorialists  had  ex- 
pressed no  more  than  the  wish  to  await  the  decision  of  the 
Oueen  in  Council ;  and  for  so  saying  they  were  warned  that 
if  they  did  not  openly  disclaim  the  imputation  of  sympathising 
with  Bishop  Colenso's  views,  they  would  be  "  generally  and 
fairly  considered  as  ha\ing  adopted  them." 

A  more  striking  instance  of  extra-judicial  tyranny  and 
oppressiveness  it  would  be  impossible  to  find  in  the  ecclesiastical 
history  of  the  present  century.  Bishop  Gray  was,  however, 
speaking  the  strict  truth  when  he  declared  that  he  could  not 
regard  their  protest  without  stultifying  his  whole  proceed- 
ings and  acknowledging  the  right  of  appeal  to  the  Privy 
Council,  "  which,"  he  said,  "  I  had  formally  repudiated."  We 
need  no  further  confession.  It  was  unfortunate  for  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown  that  he  had  not  been  able  b}-  this  device 


36o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

to  arrest  the  interference  of  the  Crown   in  the  case  of  Mr, 
Long. 

But  for  those  who  regarded  the  proceedings  of  Bishop  Gray 
as  sheer  usurpation  the  way  was  perfectly  clear ;  and  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  had  not  a  moment's  hesitation  in  taking  it. 
Dr.  Gray  had  declared  that  if  the  Metropolitan  could  not 
remove  an  unfaithful  officer  from  his  office,  no  power  on  earth 
could.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  could  not.  The  Crown 
could  not.  The  Bishop  of  Natal  at  once  rejoins,  and  his  words 
dispose  of  the  whole  matter  : — 

"  Let  us  stop  here  for  a  moment  and  consider  the  statement, 
....  in  which  lies  the  Bishop's  whole  misapprehension  of 
his  position.  He  asserts  that  the  Crown  cannot  remove 
a  Bishop ;  I  am  advised  that  the  Crown  can  remove  a 
Bishop,  and  that  no  other  power  in  the  Church  of 
England    can.       Here,   then,   is    the    true    remedy   for  the 

present  supposed  grievance If,  then,  as  it  is  asserted, 

I  have  transgressed  so  grievously — nay,  if  I  have  trans- 
gressed at  all — the  laws  of  the  Church  of  England,  it  is 
perfectly  competent  for  the  Bishops  of  Capetown  and 
Grahamstown,  or  any  Bishops  of  England,  my  accusers,  to 
make  their  complaint  to  Her  Majesty,  and  seek  redress  at 
her  hands.  They  may  present,  as  I  myself  have  done,  a 
petition  to  be  heard  before  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the 
Privy  Council,  or  any  other  court  which  Her  Majesty  may 

see  good  to  appoint /  call  upon  them  solemnly  to  do 

this,  and  not  to  persist  in  the  unjustifiable  practice  of  utter- 
ing abusive  and,  in  fact,  libellous  invectives  against  me.  I 
will  put  no  obstacles  in  the  way  of  such  an  inquiry :  I  will 
raise  no  technical  objections,  nor  interpose  unnecessary 
delays.  But,  if  they  refuse  to  do  this,  then  let  them  hold 
their  peace  as  to  my  having  broken  faith  with  the  Church 
of  England  and  violated  her  laws.  Or,  if  they  reject  Her 
Majesty's  supremacy,  and  desire  to  shake  off  the  control  of 
these  wholesome  laws,  which  protect  the  clergy  of  the 
Church  of  England  from  the  grinding  oppression  of  mere 


I 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       361 

ecclesiastical  domination,  then  let  this  purpose  be  distinctly 
avowed,  and  so  we  shall  understand  more  clearly  the  end 
which  is  aimed  at,  and  the  nature  of  the  conflict  in  which 
we  are  engaged."  ^ 

Nor  can  the  distinction  drawn  by  Bishop  Gray  between 
temporal  and  spiritual  jurisdiction  be  described  as  anything 
but  a  groundless  and  mischievous  fallacy.  The  Crown  un- 
questionably claims  and  exercises  the  power  of  allowing  or 
disallowing  the  judgements  which  may  have  been  passed  by 
Bishops  upon  their  clergy,  and  knows  nothing  of  the  distinc- 
tion on  which  Bishop  Gray  lays  stress.  Dr.  Gray  had  himself 
seen  Dr.  Rowland  Williams  restored  to  his  spiritual  functions 
by  the  decree  of  the  Privy  Council,  in  direct  opposition  to  the 
wishes  of  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury.  It  was,  therefore,  open  to 
Bishop  Hamilton  to  declare  that  if  Dr.  Williams  should  pre- 
sume to  exercise  priestly  functions  in  the  diocese  of  Salisbury 
after  the  spiritual  sentence  of  the  Bishop  had  been  notified  to 
him,  without  an  appeal  to  Canterbury,  and  without  being 
restored  to  his  office  by  the  Bishop,  he  should  be  ipso  facto 
excommunicate,  and  it  would  become  the  Bishop's  duty  to 
pronounce  sentence  accordingly.     Bishop  Colenso  adds  : — 

"  Of  course,  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  though  feeling  so  deeply 
on  this  question,  has  never  attempted  to  carry  out  such  a 
measure.  The  notion  of  such  a  proceeding  would  not  now 
be  tolerated  for  a  moment  in  England."  '^ 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  theory  of  the  Royal 
supremacy  is  confined  to  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  The 
King's  power  is  declared  in  the  first  Canon  of  the  Church  of 
England  to  be  the  highest  power  under  God  within  his  realms 
of  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  and  all  his  other  dominions 
and  countries  ;  but  if  a  distinction  not  known  to  English  law 

*  Remarks  on  the  Proceedings  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  1864,  p.  23. 
2  lb.  p.  2;. 


362  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  viii. 

can  be  drawn  in  South  Africa  or  elsewhere,  the  experiment, 
as  the  Bishop  of  Natal  has  warned  us,  will  be  tried  at  no 
distant  day  at  home.  It  must  be  so,  if  a  mass  of  literature 
or  volumes  of  dogmatic  declarations  are  to  be  forced  as  being 
de  fide  on  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  or  any  other 
Church.     According  to  Bishop  Gray, 

"  What  the  Catholic  Church,  while  yet  one,  during  the  first 
thousand  years  of  her  history,  under  the  Spirit's  guidance 
in  her  great  Councils,  declared  to  be,  or  received  as,  the 
true  faith,  tJiat  is  the  true  faith,  and  that  we  receive  as  such. 
More  than  this  we  are  not  bound  to  acknowledge.  Less 
we  may  not." 

Such  is  the  doctrine  of  Bishop  Gray.  By  means  of  it  any 
one  may  be  crushed.  Why  are  the  Councils  held  before 
A.D.  1000  to  be  held  infallible,  and  later  Councils  to  be 
unanimously  rejected  .-'  How  are  the  decrees  of  any  of  these 
Councils,  whether  of  the  first  or  the  second  Christian  millen- 
nium, to  be  imposed  on  the  clergy  of  a  Church  which  empha- 
tically declares  the  fallibility  of  all  these  Councils  and  the 
actual  blunderings  or  errors  of  some  of  them  even  in  things 
pertaining  to  God  ?  But  it  is  not  on  the  authority  of  the 
Church  or  of  general  Councils  alone  that  Bishop  Gray  imposes 
his  yoke  upon  us. 

"  It  is  the  office  of  reason  to  examine  the  grounds,  to  weigh 
the  evidence,  of  there  being  a  revelation  from  God,  Pro- 
phecy and  miracles  are  the  grounds  upon  which  revelation 
rests  its  claims.  Through  them  an  appeal  is  made  to  the 
reason  of  man,  in  support  of  the  truth  of  God's  Word  and 
the  Divine  mission  of  our  Lord.  .  .  .  When  the  under- 
standing is  convinced  that  the  Bible  is  the  record  of  God's 
revelation     ,     .     .     the  functions  of  reason  end." 

It  is  at  least  conceivable  that  the  reason  may  declare 
emphatically    that    there    is,   and  there    must    always    be,   a 


1 863-      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       363 

revelation  (an  Apokalypsis),  but  that  this  revelation  does  not 
rest  its  claims  on  either  prophecy  or  miracles.  The  sentence 
just  cited  is,  indeed,  one  of  those  wonderful  utterances  of 
Bishop  Gray,  of  which  we  can  only  say,  as  we  have  said  already, 
that  they  bristle  with  assumptions  and  undefined  terms.  Like 
Bishop  Butler,  in  his  melancholy  and  fallacious  chapter  on 
miracles  as  an  evidence  of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  Bishop 
Gray  has  forgotten  that  diabolical  miracles  are  denounced  as 
a  snare  in  the  Old  Testament  and  in  the  New.  It  was  not 
of  Bishop  Gray  that  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  was  speaking  in  the 
following  sentences  ;  but  his  words  apply  strictly  to  his  whole 
argument  and  position  : — 

"You  go  to  a  heathen  whom  }-ou  wish  to  convert,  and  say, 
'  You  must  not  judge  of  my  religion  by  its  contents,  for 
they  are  be}'ond  your  judgement,  but  by  its  evidences, 
which  are  the  miracles.'  May  not  he  answer,  '  My  religion 
is  said  to  be  attested  by  miracles  as  well  as  yours,  and  the 
questions  of  historical  criticism,  on  the  one  side  and  on  the 
other,  are  such  as  I  have  neither  time,  learning,  nor  capa- 
city to  solve.  Besides,  according  to  }-our  own  Scriptures, 
Eg}'ptian  sorcerers  and  false  prophets  can  perform  miracles, 
so  that  I  do  not  see  how  miracles  by  themselves  can  estab- 
lish the  truth  of  a  religion '  }  Or,  rather,  supposing  him  to 
ha\"e  an}'  notion  of  religion,  would  he  not  say,  '  If  your 
religion  is  to  be  judged,  not  by  its  contents,  but  by  its 
evidences,  it  must  be  the  lowest  and  vilest  religion  in  the 
world  ' .? "  1 

It  was,  then,  for  the  sake  of  such  a  position  as  this  that 
Bishop  Gray  was  prepared  to  set  aside  the  law  of  the  Church 
of  England,  and  to  place  an  intolerable  yoke  on  the  necks  of 
its  members.  Carrying  out  this  purpose,  he  had  ruled  that 
the  Church  of  England  holds,  and  requires  its  clergy  to  hold, 
two  doctrines  (on  the  subjects  of  inspiration  and  punishment) 

1   The  Study  of  History,  p.  86. 


364  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 


which  the  judgement  of  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy- 
Council  has  declared  that  the  Church  of  England  does  not 
maintain  ;  and,  if  fresh  hindrances  should  be  placed  in  his 
way  by  later  decisions,  he  was  ready  to  go  still  further.  It 
was  for  the  sake  of  this  position  that  he  deliberately  and 
repeatedly  charged  Bishop  Colenso  with  dishonesty  in  the 
course  which  he  was  pursuing,  as 

"  teaching  directly  contrary  to  what  she  [the  Church  of 
England]  holds  on  fundamental  points,  and  directly  op- 
posite to  what  he  undertook  to  teach  when  she  gave 
him  his  commission,  and  for  the  teaching  of  which  her 
faithful  children  have  provided  for  him  a  maintenance." 

To  this  charge  the  Bishop  replied  calmly  and  patiently. 
He  had,  he  said,  resigned  his  preferment  in  England,  and 
accepted  from  the  Crown  the  appointment  to  the  see  of 
Natal,  knowing  that  he  would  be  a  Bishop  of  the  Church 
of  England,  and,  as  such,  would  still  be  under  the  protection 
of  her  laws,  whatever  those  laws  might  be.  For  the  sake, 
however,  of  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth,  he  had  been 
prepared  to  resign  his  see,  if  he  had  found  that  the  laws  of 
the  Church  of  England  forbade  the  publication  of  his  views 
on  the  Pentateuch.  He  now  challenged  his  adversaries  to 
point  out  a  single  passage  in  his  works  which  is  condemned 
by  the  existing  laws  of  the  Church  ;  or  else,  if  they  are  in 
doubt  on  any  points,  to  bring  them  at  once  to  an  issue  before 
the  only  lawful  authority.  He  was  ready,  also,  even  now  to 
resign  his  see,  whenever  he  should  be  satisfied  that  he  cannot 
hold  it  conscientiously  ;  or  that  it  would  be  better  for  his 
fellow  men  and  for  the  truth  itself,  that  he  should  resign  it, 
— which  he  does  not  feel  to  be  the  case  at  present.^ 

But,  although  the  Bishop  of  Natal  would  not  avail  himself 
of  the  retort  open  to  him,  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  shut 

1  Remarks,  &c.,  1S64,  p.  58. 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      365 

his  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  retort  might  be  made,  and  he 
candidly  said  so.  In  the  following  sentences,  written  by 
Bishop  Gray  in  condemnation  of  Bishop  Colenso,  only  those 
words  have  been  changed  which  make  the  charge  applicable 
to  the  former.     These  words  are  italicised. 

"  What  we  have  to  consider  is,  whether  one,  who  undertook 
an  office  of  great  honour  and  dignity,  at  the  hands  of  the 
Crown,  as  Bishop  and  Metropolitan  of  the  Church  of  England, 
and  received  the  emoluments  and  Jiononrs  thereof,  upon  a 
distinct  understanding  that  he  would  acknowledge  tJie  Royal 
supremacy  in  the  Church  of  England,  and  act  according  to  the 
laws  and  constitution  of  that  Church,  zuhicJi  the  Queen  of  this 
Protestant  nation,  who  appointed  him,  deemed  to  be  of  the 
very  deepest  importance  for  the  repression  of  ecclesiastical 
domination  and  the  promotion  of  true  religion  among  her 
people,  is  to  be  allowed,  now  that  he  has  changed  his 
mind,  and  holds  and  teaches  independence  of  State  control — 
a  principle  the  very  opposite  to  that  which  he  undertook  to 
teach,  and  at  first  did  teach— to  retain  his  position  in  the 
Church  of  England,  and  to  enjoy  the  emoluments  of  his 
abused  office  and  violated  trust."  ^ 

And  again  : — 

"  She  {Her  Majesty  the  Queoi)  has  no  wish  unduly  to  interfere 
with  Dr.  Gray's  liberty  of  thought  or  teaching,  but  she  says 
that,  if  he  teaches  directly  contrary  to  w'hat  she,  in  her  con- 
stitutional office  as  head  of  the  Church  of  England,  holds  on 
fundamental  points,  inforcing,  as  doctrines  of  the  Church  of 
England,  dogmas,  as  to  the  Bible  and  endless  punisJiment, 
whicJi  she  has  autJioritativcly  forbidden  to  be  inforced  witJiin 
the  Church  of  England,  and  directly  opposite  to  what  he 
undertook  to  teach,  in  respect  of  the  Royal  supremacy,  when 
she  gave  him  his  appointment,  \iQ^  shall  not  do  so  in  //^;'name, 
or  as  a  Bishop  of  the  Church  of  England.  He  must  do  it 
outside  the  Church  of  England." 

1  Remarks,  &.C.,  1864,  p.  59. 


366  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

Bishop  Gray  had  in  like  manner  spoken  of  Bishop  Colenso 
as  a  fanatic.  But  the  latter  asks  whether  any  fanaticism  can 
exceed  that  with  which,  shutting  his  eyes  to  the  realities  around 
him,  Bishop  Gray 

"  appears  to  surrender  his  whole  being  to  the  worship  of  his 
own  ideal  of  a  Catholic  Church,  which  in  defiance  of  the 
known  facts  of  history,  he  assumes  to  have  continued  one 
and  undivided  '  during  the  first  thousand  years  of  her 
history,'  and  of  which  he  seems  to  consider  himself,  by 
virtue  of  his  '  Apostolical  succession,'  the  infallible  repre- 
sentative and  exponent  in  South  Africa." 

But  for  Dr.  Gray  the  yoke  of  the  Catholic  Church  was 
perfect  freedom,  so  long  as  he  was  the  interpreter  of  her  will ; 
and  his  wiiole  attitude  of  mind  involved  a  danger  which  must 
excite  alarm  in  all  who  could  not  share  his  faith.  It  was  this 
alarm  to  which  Dean  Stanley  gave  emphatic  utterance  in  a 
speech  before  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation,  June  29,  1S66, 
when  without  previous  warning  an  attempt  was  made  to 
commit  the  House  to  an  approval  of  the  course  of  action  for 
the  intrusion  of  a  strange  Bishop  into  Natal,  then  contemplated 
by  Dr.  Gray. 

It  is  hard  to  see  how  the  tactics  thus  employed  can  be 
regarded  in  any  other  light  than  that  of  indecent  stratagem. 
Anything,  it  would  seem,  was  thought  fair  in  the  fight  against 
the  Bishop  of  Natal.  In  the  previous  year  (1865),  without 
any  specification  of  the  object  aimed  at,  an  address  had  been 
brought  from  the  Upper  to  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation, 
and  in  an  assembly  in  which  only  17  out  of  140  members 
were  present,  was  carried  by  a  majority  of  1 1  to  5,  and  then 
sent  out  to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  as  representing  the 
sentiments  of  the  Convocation  of  the  Province  of  Canterbury 
on  Bishop  Colenso's  heresies.  The  resolution  which  the 
Lower  House  was  now  (1866)  asked  to  approve  was   that 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      367 

the  Church  of  England  held  communion  with  the  Bishop  of 
Capetown  and  the  other  Bishops,  who  had  excommunicated 
Bishop  Colenso.  With  quiet  sarcasm  Dean  Stanley  expressed 
his  agreement  with  the  motion,  adding  that,  much  as  he  dis- 
approved of  Bishop  Gray's  proceedings,  they  did  not  appear 
to  him  to  be  offences  of  so  grave  a  character  as  to  justify  a 
refusal  to  hold  communion  with  him.  But  the  case  was 
altered  by  the  proposal  pledging  the  House  to  hold  com- 
munion with  any  Bishop  whom  Dr.  Gray  might  put  in 
Dr.  Colenso's  place,  and  against  this  proposal  Dean  Stanley 
entered  his  emphatic  protest. 

The  issue  of  the  theological  controversy  between  the  two 
prelates  in  South  Africa,  and  even  the  personal  fate  of  either 
of  them,  is  of  little  moment  compared  with  the  importance  of 
preserving  intact  the  existing  liberties  of  the  English  clergy 
throughout  the  British  Empire,  and  of  maintaining  inviolate, 
for  all  branches  of  the  Church  of  England,  a  right  to  the 
protection  of  the  same  laws  and  standards  of  appeal  which 
guard  the  freedom  and  regulate  the  teaching  of  the  Church 
at  home. 

It  was  precisely  this  freedom  which  was  endangered  by 
the  action  of  Bishop  Gray.  He  had  sentenced,  and  proposed 
to  deprive  a  Bishop,  in  a  Synod  composed  entirely  of  Bishops, 
without  presbyters,  without  laymen,  without  legal  assessors, — a 
Synod  called  together  without  the  consent  of  the  ci\-il  power, 
either  of  the  colony  or  of  the  mother  country  ;  and  from  this 
sentence  he  had  offered  an  appeal  which  no  Bishop  and  no 
clergyman  could  accept.  This  course,  if  not  hindered,  must 
involve  the  entire  ruin  of  our  whole  ecclesiastical  system,  for 
it  could  not  fail  to  establish  an  arbitrary  tyranny.  Bishop 
Gray  had,  indeed,  spoken  of  certain  principles  as  guiding  him 
to  his  decision  ;  but  this  could  not  do  away  with  "  the  funda- 
mental injustice  of  his  proceedings  because  he  chose  those 
principles  for  himself     He  might  just  as  well  have  chosen 


368  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

either  the  principles  of  the  Puritans  or  those  of  the  Continental 
Reformers."  ^ 

His  course  was,  indeed,  one  of  plain  defiance  of  the  law. 

"  The  Supreme  Court  of  Appeal  in  this  country  has  deter- 
mined that  it  is  legal  for  every  Bishop  and  every  clergyman 
to  hold  the  hope  that  there  may  be  found  some  means  in 
the  infinite  mercy  of  God  to  restore  His  erring  creatures. 
This  is  the  proposition  which  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  has 
declared  to  be  intolerable  in  South  Africa,  and  which  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Appeal  in  this  country  has  declared  to 
be  tolerable  in  the  Bishops  and  clergy  of  the  ■  Church  of 
England.  Therefore,  by  accepting  this  ground  of  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown's  judgement,  you  place  yourselves  in 
direct  antagonism  to  the  law  of  this  country." 

For  the  other  counts  on  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had 
been  'tried  and  sentenced,'  Dean  Stanley  showed  that  in  Bishop 
Gray's  decision  there  was  the  same  direct  antagonism  to  the 
rulings  of  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council,  and 
that  his  procedure  had  been  throughout  reckless.  He  had 
been  playing  with  edged  tools.  The  Bishop  of  Natal  might 
have  spoken  now  and  then  in  a  somewhat  disparaging  man- 
ner of  parts  of  the  Prayer  Book  and  of  parts  of  the  Articles  ; 
but  if  he  was  to  be  deposed  for  this,  the  principle  must  be 
extended  to  the  excommunication  and  deposition  of  many 
persons  both  in  high  and  low  station  within  the  Church  of 
England.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  had  declared  in 
the  House  of  Lords 

"  that  in  consequence  of  the  charitable  and  universal  hope  of 
mercy  which  the  Burial  Service  pronounces  on  the  departed 
there  were  circumstances  under  which  nothing  could  induce 
him  to  read  it."  - 

^  Speech  before  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation,  1867,  p.  28. 
2  /^,  p_  55, 


1863.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       369 

If  it  was  competent  for  the  Primate  to  speak  thus,  the 
language  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  in  reference  to  the  Baptismal 
Service  was  not  less  excusable.  If  the  Convocation  should 
approve  the  judgement  of  Bishop  Gray,  they  would  condemn 
large  numbers  of  clergy  who  hold  the  same  principles  as 
those  which  had  been  denounced  by  the  Metropolitan  of 
South  Africa, — numbers  against  whom  they  had  not  proposed, 
and  dared  not  to  propose,  to  institute  proceedings. 

"  I  might  mention  one,"  the  Dean  added,  "  who  ....  has 
ventured  to  say  that  the  Pentateuch  is  not  the  work  of 
Moses  ;  who  has  ventured  to  say  that  there  are  parts  of  the 
Sacred  Scriptures  which  are  poetical  and  not  historical ;  who 
has  ventured  to  say  that  the  Holy  Scriptures  themselves 
rise  infinitely  by  our  being  able  to  acknowledge  both  the 
poetical  character  and  also  the  historical  incidents  in  their 
true  historical  reality  ;  who  has  ventured  to  say  that  the 
narratives  of  those  historical  incidents  are  coloured  not  un- 
frequently  by  the  necessary  infirmities  which  belong  to  the 
human  instruments  by  which  they  were  conveyed, — and  that 
individual  is  the  one  who  now  addresses  you.  ...  I  am  .iC^ 
unwilling  to  take  my  place  with  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  with 
Jerome,  and  with  Athanasius.  But  in  that  same  goodly 
company  I  shall  find  the  despised  and  rejected  Bishop  of 
Natal.  At  least  deal  out  the  same  measure  to  me  that  you 
deal  to  him  ;  at  least  judge  for  all  a  righteous  judgement. 
Deal  out  the  same  measure  to  those  who  are  well 
befriended  and  who  are  present,  as  to  those  who  are 
unbefriended  and  absent." 

Many  years  later  Dean  Stanley  addressed  with  equal  fear- 
lessness an  assembly  of  Bishops  and  clergy  gathered  together 
in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber  (January  16,  1880)  at  a  meeting 
of  the  S.P.G.:— 

"  Speaking  to  you  as  a  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel  I  am  ashamed  that  these  questions  should  occupy 
VOL.  1.  B  B 


370  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

your  attention,  relating  as  they  do  to  one  who,  as  a  propa- 
gator of  the  Gospel,  will  be  remembered  long  after  you  are 
all  dead  and  buried.  I  know  that  everything  I  say  will  be 
received  with  ridicule  and  contumely.  Nevertheless,  I  say 
that,  long  after  we  are  dead  and  buried,  his  memory  will  be 
treasured  as  that  of  the  one  missionary  Bishop  in  South 
Africa  who  translated  the  Scriptures  into  the  language  of 
the  tribes  to  which  he  was  sent  to  minister  ;  the  one  Bishop 
who,  by  his  researches  and  by  his  long  and  patient  inves- 
tigations, however  much  you  may  disapprove  of  them, 
has  left  a  permanent  mark  upon  English  theology, — yes, 
though  you  may  ridicule,  I  say  the  one  bishop  who,  assailed 
by  scurrilous  and  unscrupulous  invective  unexampled  in 
the  controversy  of  this  country,  and  almost  in  the  history, 
miserable  as  it  is,  of  religious  controversy  itself,  continued 
his  researches  in  a  manner  in  which  he  stood  quite  alone, 
and  never  returned  one  word  of  harshness  to  his  accusers  ; 
the  one  Bishop  who  was  revered  by  the  natives  who  asked 
him  to  intercede  for  them  with  the  Government,  and  that 
without  reference  to  any  other  Bishop  in  South  Africa  ;  the 
one  Bishop  to  whom  the  natives  came  long  distances  to 
place  themselves  under  his  protection,  or  even  to  have  the 
pleasure  of  looking  upon  his  countenance.  I  say  there  will 
be  one  Bishop  who,  by  his  bold  theology — (interruption) — 
there  will  be  one  Bishop  who,  when  his  own  interests  were 
on  one  side  and  the  interests  of  a  poor  savage  chief  on  the 
other,  did  not  hesitate  to  sacrifice  his  own  ;  and  with  a 
manly  generosity,  for  which  this  Society  has  not  a  word  of 
sympathy,  did  his  best  to  protect  the  suppliant,  did  not 
hesitate  to  come  over  from  Africa  to  England  to  plead  the 
cause  of  the  poor  and  unfriended  savage,  and  when  he  had 
secured  the  support  of  the  Colonial  Office,  (unlike  other 
colonial  Bishops)  immediately  went  back  to  his  diocese. 
For  all  these  things  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel  appears  to  have  no  sympathy  ;  but,  you  may 
depend  upon  it,  in  the  world  at  large,  wherever  Natal  is 
mentioned,  they  will  win  admiration ;  and  posterity  will 
say   that,   among  the    propagators    of  the    Gospel    in    the 


\ 


1 864.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       371 

nineteenth  century,  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was  not  the  least 
efficient." 

The  Charge  of  Bishop  Gray  delivered  to  the  diocese  of 
Natal  in  his  primary  Metropolitical  visitation  in  1864  calls  for 
no  further  criticism.  There  are  classes  of  minds  which  seem 
to  have  no  affinity  with  each  other,  and  intellects  to  which 
everything  seems  to  present  itself  through  a  different  medium. 
It  is  not  so  much  that  they  diffisr  on  leading  principles  as 
that  there  are  no  two  points  even  of  detail  in  which  they  seem 
to  be  agreed.  Whatever  be  the  subject  with  which  they  deal, 
their  methods  of  approaching  it  seem  hopelessly  antagonistic, 
and  their  conclusions  express  themselves  in  diametrically 
contradictory  propositions.  Such  a  contrast  will  be  forced 
on  all  who  compare,  it  matters  little  on  what  topic,  the  utter- 
ances of  Mr.  Maurice  and  of  Dr.  Pusey.  A  gulf  not  less 
vast  seems  to  intervene  between  the  mind  of  Bishop  Gray 
and  that  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  We  need  not  doubt  that 
in  this  Charge  the  former  expressed  his  real  convictions  ;  but 
we  may  be  very  sure  that  he  never  analysed  them  or  sought 
to  test  them  by  the  realities  of  the  world  in  which  he  lived. 
We  ma}'  be  tempted  to  think  that  for  himself  it  was  happier 
thus.  Into  such  a  mind  the  entrance  of  a  single  doubt  would, 
in  the  words  of  Bishop  Wilberforce,  have  been  like  a  loaded 
shell  shot  into  the  fortress  of  his  soul  ;  and  it  must  have  been 
so,  because  with  him  honest  doubt  was  a  thing  which  had  no 
existence.  But  in  those  who,  whether  by  training  or  by  self- 
formed  habit,  have  learnt  to  try  the  spirits  and  to  test  facts, 
or  rather  statements  of  facts,  the  utterances  of  Bishop  Gray 
cannot  fail  to  excite  a  feeling  of  profound  astonishment. 
They  build  on  different  foundations  ;  and  their  methods  are 
therefore  mutually  repulsive.  But  except  for  such  as  share 
his  faith  in  the  "  Catholic  Church,"  the  productions  of  Bishop 
Gray  will  be  monuments  chiefly  of  a  wonderful  intellectual 
L^  B  B  2 


372  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

perversity.  For  all  others  this  Charge,  written  with  the 
purpose  of  branding  the  Bishop  of  Natal  as  one  who  had 
deliberately  fouled  the  very  fountains  of  morality  and  religion, 
will  be  a  sickening  document  indeed. 

The  methods  of  procedure  adopted  by  the  opponents  of  the 
Bishop  are  not  rendered  more  attractive  by  lapse  of  time. 
Further  thought  only  makes  it  more  clear  that  the  question 
might  without  difficulty  have  been  settled  on  its  merits,  if  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown  had  submitted  himself  frankly  to  the 
decision  which  might  follow  the  appeal  of  the  defendant  to 
the  Crown.  To  this  necessity  Bishop  Gray  declared  that  no 
consideration  would  ever  induce  him  to  yield  ;  and  although 
his  influence  might  carry  a  certain  amount  of  weight  in  South 
Africa,  he  was  only  giving  strength  to  influence  of  a  very 
different  kind  in  England.  An  address  drawn  up  and  signed 
by  laymen  affirmed  it 

"  to  be  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  Established  Church, 
and  to  the  nation  at  large,  that  there  should  be  within  the 
Church  itself  men  of  mark  and  influence  who  desire  to 
bring  its  working  into  conformity  with  the  highest  know- 
ledge and  the  best  aspirations  of  modern  times." 

But  in  using  the  words  "  within  the  Church  "  they  declared 
that,  as  they  were  well  aware,  the  clergy,  though  an  important, 
are  still  but  a  very  small  portion  of  the  Church,  and  they 
added  : — 

"  We  certainly  have  as  deep  an  interest  in  the  full  and  free 
examination  of  theological  dogmas,  and  the  exposure  of 
theological  errors,  as  we  have  in  the  discussion  of  dogmas 
and  the  exposure  of  errors  in  political  science.  And  it  is 
of  the  utmost  importance  to  all  of  us  who  desire  to  find  the 
truth,  that  the  Bishops  and  clergy  of  our  Church  should, 
with  honest  boldness,  use  the  freedom  of  opinion  and 
freedom    of    expression    which    the    highest    ecclesiastical 


1 866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       373 

tribunal  has  decided  that  they  may  lawfully  use.  .  .  . 
Much  as  we  should  admire  the  sincerity  and  self-sacrifice 
of  any  clergyman  who  might  abandon  his  preferment  in 
the  Church  from  difficulties  arising  from  scientific  and 
critical  investigations  and  conclusions,  we  venture  to  think 
that  those  take  a  more  enlarged  view  of  their  position  as 
ministers  of  the  national  Establishment,  who  feel  able  to 
retain  it  with  a  good  conscience,  and  that  they  aid  the 
cause  of  religious  truth  by  so  remaining  at  their  post." 

Nor  were  the  laymen  of  Natal  less  explicit  in  the  utterance 
of  their  opinions.  In  an  address  to  the  Convocation  of  the 
Province  of  Canterbury  they  referred  to  the  letter  addressed 
by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  (Longley)  to  Dean  Green, 
urging  the  clergy  to  withhold  their  obedience  from  the  Bishop 
of  the  diocese,  as  a  letter  inciting  the  clergy  to  the  offences 
of  schism  and  perjury  (February  24,  1866).  They  also  com- 
plained that  the  rights  of  members  of  the  Church  of  England 
in  the  colony  were  systematically  encroached  upon  by  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown's  assertion  of  a  jurisdiction  which,  as 
loyal  subjects,  they  could  not  in  any  way  recognise.  They 
protested,  further,  against  the  action  of  the  Soeiety  for  the 
Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  in  departing  from  its  rules  on  the 
plea  of  proceedings  all  of  which  the  highest  legal  tribunal 
had  pronounced  to  be  null  and  void  ;  and  also  against  the 
assumption  that  those  clergymen  in  Natal  who  gave  allegiance 
to  Bishop  Gray,  and  who,  from  the  fact  of  his  having  the 
disbursement  of  the  Society's  funds,  are  necessarily  exposed 
to  an  unscrupulous  exercise  of  power,  might  yet  be  held  to 
represent  fairly  the  general  feelings  of  members  of  the  Church 
of  England  in  the  colony.  They  asked,  in  short,  for  justice. 
They  knew  that  this  justice  could  be  attained  only  by  a 
settlement  of  the  question  on  its  merits  ;  and  this  demand  for 
justice  implied  a  further  protest  against  the  assumption  of 
Archbishop  Longley  and  Bishop  Gray  that  the  paying  of  due 


374  I^-IFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

obedience  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal  involved  either  approval  or 
disapproval  of  certain  opinions.  You  cannot,  the  Archbishop 
said  to  Dean  Green,  submit  yourself  to  Bishop  Colenso  with- 
out identifying  yourself  with  his  errors.  These  errors  had 
not  been  formulated  in  any  legal  court,  still  less  had  they 
been  condemned.  But  the  doctrine  of  the  Archbishop  was 
one  which  could  not  be  maintained  in  England  ;  and  the 
idea  that  the  clergy  or  laity  of  an  English  diocese  would 
make  themselves  responsible  for,  or  partakers  in,  the  real  or 
supposed  errors  of  the  Bishop  of  the  see  before  his  legal  trial 
or  condemnation,  would  be  scouted  as  an  egregious  and 
monstrous  absurdity.  From  the  Bishop  of  Natal  they  would, 
of  course,  receiv^e  only  a  clear  exposure  of  this  false  insinua- 
tion. In  his  reply  to  the  Durban  address  (November,  1865) 
he  spoke  of  their  recognising  as  the 

"grand  foundation-/;7;?(;^/'/^  of  the  Church  of  England,  that 
the  Queen,  not,  of  course,  in  her  personal  capacity,  but  as 
representing  the  whole  nation — the  State,  and  not  the 
clerical  body — is  the  one  only  legislator  and  supreme  arbiter 
of  all  causes  which  may  arise  within  her  pale,  spiritual  as 
v;ell  as  temporal  ;  that  the  Archbishops  and  Bishops  in 
England  itself  exercise  jurisdiction  in  the  Church,  as  it  is 
delegated  to  them  from  the  Crown,  and  hold  their  courts  in 
the  Queen's  name ;  that  all  their  authority,  except  only 
what  comes  by  force  of  moral  persuasion  and  convincing 
argument,  by  the  power  of  the  holy  life,  and  the  influence 
of  the  truth  spoken  in  love,  emanates  from  the  common 
Head  of  the  Church  and  State.  This  principle  seems,  no 
doubt,  to  many  most  excellent  persons,  very  objectionable  ; 
it  is  styled  '  Erastian,'  and  condemned  as  ungodly.  I  am 
not  now  called  upon  to  justify  or  maintain  it.  I  merely 
assert  that  it  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  the  Church  of 
England." 

With  this  decisive  statement  the  language  used  at  the  time 
by   Dean  Green  stands  out  in  ludicrous  contrast.     He  took 


1865.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      375 

credit  to  himself  for  disregarding  the  charge  of  speaking 
against  Caesar  as  one  which  "  was  brought  against  our  Saviour, 
who  fulfilled  all  righteousness."  He  was  thankful  that  there 
remained  still  enough  of  the  Divine  love  "  to  make  him 
shrink  with  horror  from  the  teaching  of  Dr.  Colenso  "  whose 
words  "make  light  of  the  unutterable  sufferings  of  Christ 
upon  the  Cross."  "  Fallen  spirits,"  he  added  in  his  letter 
to  Mr.  Tonnesen  (February  9,  1866),  "  may  use  their  subtle 
intellect  to  cavil  and  condemn  the  Bible,  whilst  in  heaven  we 
believe  it  is  read  with  ineffable  and  deepest  adoration."  We 
need  not  cite  more  of  this  gross  mixture  of  nonsense  and 
falsehood. 

It  is  impossible  to  understand  fully  the  significance  of  the 
great  conflict  provoked  by  the  publication  of  the  Bishop's 
work  on  the  Pentateuch,  unless  we  mark  every  step  taken  by 
the  prelate  who  undertook  to  beat  him  dowm,  or  to  get  rid  of 
him.  It  is  necessary  to  see  how  at  every  stage  of  the  combat 
the  weapons  employed  are  undefined  terms,  or  terms  which 
Bishop  Gray  well  knew  that  he  w^as  using  in  one  sense  while 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  was  openly  and  confessedly  using  them  in 
another.  This  is  in  a  marked  degree  the  characteristic  of  a 
letter  written  by  Bishop  Gray  w^hen  the  time  which  he  had 
fixed  as  the  limit  for  recantation  drew  nigh.  It  could  not  be 
known  except  from  the  subscription  at  the  end  that  it  was 
addressed  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  for  there  were  no  words  of 
greeting  or  naming  at  the  outset.  The  letter,  it  is  said,  was 
meant  to  be  informal  ;  and  this  was  Bishop  Gray's  notion  of 
friendly  informality : — 

"  As  the  time  drawls  near,"  so  the  letter  began,  "  in  which  I 
feel  that  I  must  take  the  most  painful  step  I  have  ever 
taken  in  my  life,  my  heart  yearns  over  you  ;  and  I  make 
this  last,  I  fear  ineffectual,  attempt,  to  lead  you  to  adopt 
one  or  other  of  the  two  only  courses  which  can  spare  us 


376  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viir. 

both  the  pain  and  distress  of  a  formal  severance.  My  own 
feehng,  since  you  entered  upon  the  course  which  you  have 
of  late  followed — and,  I  think,  at  first,  your  own  also — has 
been,  that  having  consciously  departed  from  the  faith  of  the 
Church  of  England,  the  true  line  for  you,  as  a  religious- 
minded  man,  was  openly  to  admit  this,  and  retire  from  a 
post  which  not  only  implied  that  you  held  that  faith,  but 
required  you  to  see  that  others  under  you  taught  it.  I 
think  you  must  be  conscious  that  you  do  not  believ^e  what 
the  Church  teaches.  If  you  really  held  what  it  holds,  you 
would,  I  am  persuaded,  have  been  shocked,  and  deeply 
pained,  at  what  has  been  said  of  your  supposed  views,  and 
at  your  having  given  any  real  grounds  for  the  imputations 
cast  upon  you  ;  and  you  would  at  once  have  eagerly  pointed 
out  that  you  had  been  misunderstood — misrepresented — 
and  have  declared  what  your  real  convictions  were,  and 
given  to  the  world  a  full  confession  of  your  faith.  You 
have  not  done  this,  and  it  leaves  the  impression  on  my 
mind,  that  you  know  and  feel  that,  on  the  very  gravest 
subjects  and  doctrines,  you  differ  from  the  Church.  If  so, 
surely  you  ought,  as  a  true  man,  to  say  so,  and  save  us  all 
the  pain,  anxiety,  and  many  troubles,  which  your  not 
saying  so  is  entailing.  Unless  you  are  very  much  changed 
from  what  you  were  when  we  had  free,  confidential,  and 
loving  intercourse  with  each  other,  you  will  not  be  content 
to  hold  on  to  your  position  and  endowments  upon  the 
miserable  plea  that  the  measure  of  the  legal  is  the  measure 
of  the  moral  obligation. 
"  But  if  your  own  judgement  leads  you  to  think  that  you  have 
not  departed  from  the  truths  which  you  have  undertaken  to 
teach,  ought  not  the  general  voice  of  the  Church  on  this 
matter  to  convince  you  ?  That  voice  has  been,  I  need 
scarce  tell  you,  clearly  expressed — not  in  England  only, 
but  by  the  Synods  of  many  colonial  Churches,  and  of 
Churches  in  Scotland  ;  and,  as  you  will  learn  by  this  mail, 
by  the  unanimous  vote  of  the  first  Provincial  Synod  of 
Canada,  and  the  equally  unanimous  vote  of  the  General 
Convocation  of  the   Church  in   America,  which  is  one  in 


1 


1 866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      377 

faith  with  ourselves.  These  conclusions  are,  in  each  place, 
the  act  of  the  whole  Church,  consisting  of  Bishops,  clergy, 
and  laity.  As,  then,  through  a  great  many  constitutional 
organs,  the  Churches  of  our  communion  throughout  the 
world  have  spoken  with  one  voice,  ought  you  not  to  '  hear 
the  Church,'  and  cease  to  trouble  and  disturb  its  peace,  by 
withdrawing  of  your  own  accord  to  lay  communion  ? 

"  But  if  you  are  not  prepared  for  this,  and  think  that  it  is 
through  misapprehension  that  the  Church  has  denounced 
your  teaching,  a  door  is  still  open  to  you.  You  can  plead 
your  opinions,  or  explain  }'our  views,  if  you  so  will,  before 
the  nearest  approach  to  a  national  Synod  which  we  can 
obtain,  and,  after  striving  to  show  their  conformity  with  its 
faith,  leave  yourself  in  its  hands.  Such  a  Synod  has  been 
asked  for  by  the  Province  of  Canada,  and  by  myself  very 
earnestly.  To  the  decision  of  such  a  body  I  shall  cheerfully 
refer  everything.  To  civil  judges  you  know  that  I  could 
not,  as  a  matter  of  conscience,  refer  the  decision  of  a  spiritual 
question. 

"  Consider,  I  pray  you,  what  the  result  must  be  of  your  refusing 
this,  and  forcing  yourself  upon  the  Church." 

This  result,  Bishop  Gray  added,  would  be  his  excommuni- 
cation, and  the  consecration  of  another  Bishop  in  his  place. 

"  I  think  that  your  heart  must  recoil  from  the  strife  and  con- 
fusion you  have  already  occasioned.  Build  up  the  Church 
in  Natal  in  one  communion  you  never  can.     Another  may 

do  this.     You  only  can  weaken  and  disturb With 

very  deep  sorrow  that  we  should  ever  have  been  brought 
into  the  relationship  in  which  we  now  stand  to  each  other, 

"  I  am  truly  )^ours, 

"  R.  Capetown." 

To  this  letter  the  Bishop  sent  the  following  reply.  No  one 
who  reads  it  with  unprejudiced  mind  will  deny  its  singular 
calmness,  dignity,  and  beauty. 


378  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

To  THE  Bishop  of  Capetown. 

"BiSHOPSTOWE,/rt;?;/ary  i,  1866. 

"  My  Brother, 

"  Your  letter  reached  me  on  Christmas  Day,  just  after  I  had 
come  in  from  publishing  to  a  crowded  mass  of  native 
Christians  and  heathens  the  'glad  tidings  of  great  joy,'  and 
from  commemorating  with  some  of  them  at  the  Holy  Table 
the  dying  love  of  our  Lord.  Though  not  properly  addressed 
to  myself — for  it  begins  without  even  a  common  formula  of 
courtesy — I  read  it  at  once  and  considered  it ;  and  I  need 
not  say  how  painfully  its  contents  contrasted  with  the  tenor 
of  the  Christmas  song,  '  Peace  on  earth,  good  will  to  man,' — 
and  how  soon  it  recalled  to  me  the  truth  of  our  Lord's  own 
words,  '  Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  send  peace  on  earth. 
I  come  not  to  send  peace  but  a  sword.' 

"  It  must  be  so,  then.  I  give  you  credit  for  doing  what  you 
believe  to  be  your  duty  before  God  and  man.  I  claim,  in 
the  name  of  Christian  charity,  that  }'ou  shall  think  the  same 
of  me  ;  that  differing  wholly,  as  we  do,  from  one  another — 
doing  each  what  we  think  to  be  right — pointing  out  what 
appear  to  be  the  grave  defects  in  each  other's  conduct — 
taking  action,  if  need  be,  against  each  other,  as  we  seem 
driven  to  do — we  shall  yet  refrain,  as  far  as  possible,  from 
judging  one  another  with  harsh  and  angry  judgement, 
remembering  that  to  one  common  Master  we  must  each  of 
us  stand  or  fall. 

"As  this  is  probably  the  last  time  that  we  shall  communicate 
before  what  you  call  a  '  formal  severance,'  I  feel  it  to  be  my 
duty  to  reply  to  your  letter — not  to  your  official  one,  which 
you  say  I  shall  receive,  as  you  have  '  given  conditional 
instructions,'  upon  the  subject  of  my  '  being  separated  by 
open  sentence  from  the  communion  of  the  Church,'  for  I 
cannot  recognise  your  right  to  address  to  me  any  '  official ' 
letter  on  such  a  subject ;  but  I  shall  reply  to  this  com- 
munication, which,  though  intended  to  be  private,  I  feel 
justified  under  the  circumstances  in  publishing.     .     .     . 

"  I  cannot  doubt  that,  as  a  man,  you  must  feel  pain,  as  you 


1866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       379 

say,  while  about  to  take  a  step  which,  if  it  had  the  result 
which  you  anticipate — of  severing  me  from  the  whole  Eng- 
lish Church  and  'all  the  Churches  of  our  communion 
throughout  the  world,' — would  affect  so  seriously  me  and 
mine,  after  many  years  of  hard  labour  in  the  Church  at 
home,  and  in  the  missionary  work  of  this  diocese.  That 
pain,  I  think,  must  be  deepened  by  the  consciousness  that 
you  have  judged  and  condemned  me  unheard  ;  that,  when 
I  refused  to  defend  myself  before  you,  believing  that  the 
jurisdiction  which  you  claimed  to  exercise  in  the  Queen's 
name  was  unlawful,  as  it  has  now  been  pronounced  to  be, 
you  proceeded,  however,  to  'try'  me  undefended,  and  pass 
'  sentence  '  upon  mc — in  that  very  '  sentence  '  refusing  to 
allow  me  any  rigJit  of  appeal  whatever,  such  as  is  allowed 
to  the  humblest  deacon  by  the  laws  of  the  Church  of 
England.  But,  before  doing  so,  you  had  agreed  with  your 
two  brother  Bishops,  who  sat  as  assessors  in  judgement  with 
you,  and  who  also  condemned  me  unheard,  to  refuse  me 
such  right  of  appeal  ;  and  \'ou  had  also  all  three  agreed  that, 
if  I  did  not  submit  myself  to  the  'sentence'  issued  under 
these  conditions,  I  should  be  ipso  facto  excommunicate. 
....  I  repeat,  I  think  that,  to  a  manly  and  honourable 
mind,  like  yours,  the  reflexion  upon  the  injustice  of  the 
course  to  which  you  have  committed  yourself — now  that  it 
has  been  brought  to  your  notice  by  the  strong  comments 
made  upon  it  by  Englishmen  of  all  religious  persuasions — 
must  give  additional  pain. 

■"  But  the  man,  alas  !  has  too  frequently,  in  the  history  of  the 
Church,  been  sunk  in  the  tJieologian  ;  and  such  language  as 
yours  might  be  used — has  been  used  repeatedly — by  some 
pitiless  inquisitor,  while  dooming  a  victim  to  the  stake,  and 
claiming  for  himself,  and  for  his  '  Church,'  Divine  authority, 
and  the  most  absolute  infallibility. 

"  ^'ou  must  suffer  me  to  say  that  I  cannot  allow  your 
'  thoughts  '  and  '  impressions '  about  me  to  be  the  measure 
of  my  duty.  If  you  do  '  think  '  as  you  say,  doubtless  I  shall 
forfeit  your  esteem  and  that  of  those  who  think  with  you, 
by  the  course  which  I  consider  it  right  to  take  at  this  time  ; 


38o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

and  while  I  shall  regret  this  loss,  it  is  only  a  part  of  the 
sacrifice  which  is  required  of  me  by  present  circumstances, 
and  which  I  am  prepared  to  make.  We  have  only  now  to 
do  with  facts.  And  I  say  again,  as  I  have  said  in  my  first 
volume  on  the  Pentateuch,  and  repeatedly  since,  that  I  am 
not  conscious  that  in  any  of  my  published  writings  I  have 
transgressed  the  limits  allowed  to  the  clergy  of  the  national 
Church,  by  whose  laws  only  I  am  bound,  to  whose  autho- 
rity only  I  will  be  responsible,  and  not  to  that  of  the 
'  Church  of  South  Africa,'  or  of  what  you  understand  by 
the  expression  'the  Church,'  which  you  substitute 
instantly  in  your  letter  for  the  '  Church  of  England,'  with 
which  you  began. 
"  I  have  been,  as  you  rightly  imagine,  '  shocked  and  deeply 
pained '  by  very  much  that  has  been  said  of  my  '  supposed 
views '  by  many  of  my  adversaries,  more  especially  by  your- 
self, whether  speaking  as  a  fellow  Christian,  as  a  brother 
Bishop,  or  as  a  judge.  Whatever  '  supposed '  heresies  you 
might  detect  or  deplore  in  my  writings,  yet  I  consider  that 
the  tone  of  every  one  of  my  books,  from  the  Commentary 
on  the  Romans  to  the  last  volume  on  the  Pentateuch,  ought 
at  least  to  have  protected  me  from  being  publicly  charged 
by  you — in  the  house  of  God,  in  my  own  Cathedral  church— 
with  '  reckless  arrogance  like  that  which  marked  the  infidels 
of  the  last  century,'  with  '  using  the  language  of  the  boaster 
and  the  scorner,'  with  '  being  led  captive  by  the  Evil  one,' 
with  '  having  forsaken  the  Living  Words  of  God.'  I  utterly 
deny  that  I  have  given  any  'just  ground  for  these  imputa- 
tions.' And  I  do  not  feel  called  upon,  because  I  have  been, 
not  '  misunderstood,'  but  '  misrepresented,'  calumniated,  re- 
viled, by  many,  to  make  any  '  full  confession  of  my  faith,' 
be)'ond  that  which  I  have  already  made  in  my  various 
writings  already  before  the  world,  so  as  to  save  you  and 
others  the  '  pain,  anxiety,  and  trouble '  of  examining  my 
books  themselves,  of  considering  carefully  their  actual  state- 
ments, and  judging  righteously  a  righteous  judgement, 
according  to  the  truth,  and  not  according  to  foregone 
conclusions  and  violent  prejudices. 


i866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      381 

"  When,  however,  you  say  '  you  should  have  at  once  eagerly 
pointed  out  that  you  had  been  misunderstood  and  mis- 
represented '  and  add  '  you  have  not  done  this,'  I  beg  to  say 
that  I  have  done  this  more  than  once,  and  with  the  result 
that  might  have  been  expected  from  what  usually  happens 
when  strong  theological  prejudices  are  entertained  on  any 
subject.  My  explanations  were  at  once  set  aside,  or  ex- 
plained away I   will  give  you  an   instance  of 

this. 

"When  my  book  on  the  Romans  was  published,  you  wrote  to 
me  a  private  letter,  in  reply  to  which  I  said  (among  other 
things)  as  follows  : — 

"  '  I  am  sorry  that  you  have  so  much  misjudged  what  I  have 
written  about  the  Athanasian  Creed  as  to  suggest  that  I 
did  not  hold  the  essential  part  of  it,  more  especially  the 
doctrine  of  the  Divinity  of  our  Lord,  than  which  from  the 
first  moment  of  my  ministry  up  to  the  present  hour,  in  all 
my  preaching  and  teaching  (as  any  one  who  knows  them 
well  must  witness),  no  doctrine  of  the  Church  has  been 
maintained  by  me  more  strenuousl}-,  though  I  have  taught 
also  the  doctrine  of  His  perfect  humanity  more  fully  and 
prominently  than  many,  and  not  lost  sight  of  it  practically 
to  a  great  extent  as  some  do.  I  say  this  to  you  as  a  dear 
friend  and  brother ;  though,  after  all  that  I  have  written, 
even  in  this  book  on  the  Romans,  I  feel  that  I  should  be 
justified  in  declining  to  say  it  to  you  as  Metropolitan.  Nor 
do  I  think  that  you  had  any  just  ground,  from  anything 
that  I  have  said,  or  omitted  to  say,  in  my  Commentary,  for 
the  remarks  which  you  have  made  on  this  point  as  on  some 
others.' 

"  But  what  was  the  use  of  this  explanation  ?  A  charge  was 
brought  against  me  at  my  (so-called)  '  trial '  of  having 
'  contravened  '  the  Second  Article  of  our  Church  and  certain 
statements  of  the  Nicene  and  Athanasian  Creeds.  This 
charge  was  founded  on  one  sole  passage  out  of  all  my 
writings,  though  the  corresponding  '  proposition '  alleged 
against  me  in  the  Report  of  the  Committee  of  Convo- 
cation, who  examined   my  books  on   the  Pentateuch,  was 


382  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

characterised  by  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's  as  '  incomparably ' 
the  most  important  of  all  that  they  cite.  My  words,  on 
which  this  charge  was  based,  were  as  follows  : — 

" '  Lastly  it  is  perfectly  consistent  with  the  most  entire  and 
sincere  belief  in  our  Lord's  Divinity  to  hold,  as  many  do, 
that,  when  He  vouchsafed  to  become  a  "  Son  of  man,"  He 
took  our  nature  fully,  and  voluntarily  entered  into  all  the 
conditions  of  humanity,  and,  among  others,  into  that  which 
makes  our  growth  in  all  ordinary  knowledge  gradual  and 
limited.  We  are  expressly  told  that  Jesus  increased  in 
wisdom  as  well  as  in  stature.  It  is  not  supposed  that  in  His 
human  nature  He  was  acquainted,  more  than  any  educated 
Jew  of  the  age,  with  the  mysteries  of  all  modern  science  ; 
nor,  with  St.  Luke's  expressions  before  us,  can  it  be 
seriously  maintained  that,  as  an  infant  or  young  child,  He 
possessed  a  knowledge  surpassing  that  of  the  most  pious 
and  learned  adults  of  His  nation,  upon  the  subject  of 
the  authorship  and  age  of  the  different  portions  of  the 
Pentateuch.' 

"  The  Committee  of  Convocation,  under  the  chairmanship  of 
Archdeacon  Denison,  reported  upon  this  that  the  proposition 
'questions  our  Blessed  Lord's  Divine  knowledge  ; '  upon  which 
Bishop  Thirlwall  very  justly  pointed  out  that  the  Committee 
appeared  to  have  mistaken  my  obvious  meaning.  He  says : — 
'The  question  which  he  raises  does  not  properly  concern  our 
Lords  Divine  knowledge — that  is,  the  knowledge  belonging 
to  His  Divine  nature.  It  is  whether  His  human  knowledge 
was  co-extensive  with  His  Divine  omniscience.'^  And  this 
is  perfectly  true.  It  is  plain  that  my  argument  assumed 
that  one  who  had  '  a  most  entire  and  sincere  belief  in  our 
Lord's  Divinity,'  who  believed,  therefore,  that  He  had,  as 
the  Eternal  Son  of  God,  'certain  Divine  knowledge,'  might 
yet  hold,  as  many  excellent  Christians  do,  that,  as  the  Son 
of  man,  though  possessed  as  God  of  '  Almighty  Divine 
Power,' yet  He  hungered  and  thirsted,  was  weary,  weak,  and 
faint,  suffered  and  died  as  man.       Bishop  Thirlwall  further 

1  See  p.  309. 


i866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      383 

showed  that  Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor  was  '  incHned '  to  this 
view  ;  and  a  clergyman  has  proved,  in  a  letter  published  in 
my  third  preface,  that  it  has  all  along  been  fully  shared  by 
a  host  of  great  divines,  ancient  and  modern.  .  .  .  But  this 
moderation  did  not  suffice  for  }'ourself.  .  .  .  You  had  evi- 
dently made  up  }'our  mind  on  the  subject,  in  opposition  to 
the  view  of  so  man}-  great  authorities  ;  and  whereas  the 
Bishop  of  St.  David's  deprecates  any  attempt  of  the  Church 
of  England  to  promulgate  a  new  dogma  for  the  settlement 
of  the  controversy,  you  pronounced  at  once  a  peremptory 
judgement  upon  the  point  in  question  and  decided  that, 
'  in  imputing  to  our  Blessed  Lord  ignorance  and  the  possi- 
bility of  error,  the  Bishop  of  Natal  has  committed  himself 
to  a  most  subtle  heresy,  destructive  of  the  reality  of  the 
Incarnation,  and  has  departed  from  the  Catholic  faith,  as 
held  in  the  Church  from  the  beginning,  and  expressed  in 
the  Second  Article  and  the  Creeds.' 

"  What,  then,  has  been  the  use  of  my  having  '  at  once 
eagerh'  pointed  out  that  I  had  been  misunderstood  and 
misrepresented '  1 

"As  to  my  'differing  from  the  Church'  on  this  and  other  of 
'  the  very  gravest  subjects  and  doctrines,'  my  being 
'  conscious  '  of  it,  and  my  '  being  bound  as  a  true  man  to 
say  so,  and  save  you  all  the  pain,  anxiety,  and  many 
troubles  which  [my]  not  saying  so  is  entailing,'  there  can  be 
no  doubt  whatever  that  I  do  differ  very  materially  from  the 
views  which  you  lay  down  as  the  '  doctrines  of  the  Church, 
and  which  I  assume,  therefore,  to  be  the  doctrines  of  that 
body  which  you  call  'the  Church,'  but  whose  authorit)' 
over  me,  as  a  Bishop  of  the  National  Church,  I  do  not  in 
any  way  recognise.  For,  besides  the  difference  above  con- 
sidered— where  you,  in  the  name  of  your  Church,  have 
'promulgated  a  new  dogma'  which  our  Ciiurch,  the  Church 
of  England,  has  not  laid  upon  the  necks  of  her  clergy — 
your  Church,  as  you  have  said,  holds  all  her  officers  bound 
to  teach  at  least  two  dogmas,  viz.  that  '  the  whole  Bible  is 
the  unerring  word  of  the  Living  God,'  and  that  '  the  punish- 
ment of  the  wicked   in   hell  is  endless,'  upon   which  our 


384  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  viii. 

Church  does  not  dogmatise,  but  leaves  her  clergy  free  to 
think  and  speak  the  truth  on  these  points,  as  God  may- 
have  enabled  them  to  see  it.  Your  Church,  again,  main- 
tains, as  you  have  also  said,  that  '  what  the  Catholic 
Church,  while  yet  one,  during  the  first  thousand  years  of 
her  history,  under  the  Spirit's  guidance  in  her  great 
Councils,  declared  to  be,  or  received  as,  the  true  faith,  that 
is  the  true  faith,  and  that  we  receive  as  such.  More  than 
this  we  are  not  bound  to  acknowledge  ;  less,  we  may  not' 

"  Whereas  oilv  Church  says  of  the  same  '  great  Councils '  in 
her  Twenty-first  Article,  ■' when  they  be  gathered  together 
(forasmuch  as  they  be  an  assembly  of  men,  whereof  all  be 
not  governed  with  the  Spirit  and  Word  of  God)  they  may 
err,  and  sometimes  have  erred,  even  in  things  pertaining 
unto  God.' 

"  As  I  do  intend  most  assuredly  to  use,  to  the  full  extent 
which  my  own  sense  of  duty  will  allow,  the  liberty  where- 
with the  good  providence  of  God  has  made  us  free  in  the 
Church  of  England  ;  and  as  my  own  views  on  all  the  above 
points,  and  no  doubt  on  many  others,  do  not  at  all  accord 
with  yours,  it  is  certain  that  I  '  differ '  on  very  grave 
questions  from  the  views  which  you  assert  to  be  the  only 
'  true  faith,'  the  '  doctrines  of  the  Church,'  but  which  the 
Church  of  England  does  not  inforce  upon  the  consciences 
of  its  ministers. 

"  Further,  I  do  maintain  the  soundness  of  the  principle — 
though  you  speak  of  it  as  a  '  miserable  plea ' — that  for  the 
clergy  of  an  Established  Church,  which  notoriously  tole- 
rates such  extreme  views  as  are  expressed  within  it  by 
well-known  opposite  schools  of  theologians,  whose  laws 
are  made  and  inforced,  or,  as  the  progress  of  the  age  in 
knowledge  and  charity  may  seem  to  require  it,  having  first 
become  practically  relaxed  by  disuse,  are  from  time  to  time 
(as  in  the  recent  case  of  clerical  Subscription)  rescinded  and 
remodelled  by  the  State — for  the  ministers  of  such  a  Church 
the  measure  of  their  legal  is  the  only  measure  of  their  moral 
obligations,  which  others  from  without  have  a  right  to 
apply ;  while  doubtless  each  clergyman,  in  the  sanctuary 


i866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRTAL.      3S5 

of  his  own  soul,  will  judge  for  himself  how  far  his  con- 
tinuance in  the  active  discharge  of  his  ministerial  ofhce  is 
consistent  with  his  own  sense  of  truth,  and  a  due  regard  to 
those  great  objects  for  which,  in  the  eyes  of  enlightened 
men,  a  National  Church  exists. 

"  As  a  Bishop  of  the  Church  of  England,  I  thank  God  that 
at  my  consecration,  when  I  was  examined  publicly  '  in 
certain  Articles,  to  the  end  that  the  congregation  present 
might  have  a  trial,  and  bear  witness  how  I  was  minded  to 
behave  myself  in  the  Church  of  God ' — I  undertook  to 
teach — not  a  system  of  doctrines,  a  dead  body  of  dogmas, 
but  that  which  I  believe  to  be  the  truth  of  the  Living  God.'  ^ 
As  you  yourself  have  said,  '  The  Bishop's  only  contract 
with  the  Church  at  his  consecration,  is  to  teach  or  maintain 
nothing,  as  required  of  necessity  to  eternal  salvation,  but 
that  which  he  shall  be  persuaded  may  be  concluded  and 
proved  by  the  Holy  Scriptures  '  ;  though,  in  order  to  restrain 
this  liberty  within  just  bounds,  our  Church  requires  me  to 
submit  myself  to  an  authority  which  she  regards  as  supreme 
in  her  affairs,  '  in  all  causes,  spiritual  as  well  as  temporal ' — 
an  authority  which  I  gladly  recognise,  but  which  you 
repudiate. 

"  You  ask,  '  Ought  not  the  voice  of  the  Church  in  this  matter 
to  convince  you  .-' '  '  Ought  you  not  to  hear  the  Church  ? ' 
I  answer,  most  assuredly  not,  when  I  know  by  what  pro- 
cesses that  voice  has  been  elicited  ;  when  I  know  that  every- 
thing has  been  done,  in  England  as  well  as  here,  to  raise  a 
storm  of  prejudice  against  me,  without  any  fair  attempt 
having  been  made  to  examine  and  answer  my  arguments  ; 
that  not  only  the  flocks,  but  even  the  clergy,  have  been 
frightened  into  expressing  condemnation  of  my  works  with- 
out having  made  any  personal  acquaintance  with  them  ; 
that  these  Synods  have  simply  indorsed  your  proceedings, 
well  knowing  that  I  have  never  been  heard  in  my  own 
defence,  and  not  caring  to  know  what  my  defence  would 

*  See  the  remarkable  statement  of  "  strange  doctrines  to  be  banished 
and  put  away"  made  in  his  ordination  papers  by  Mr.  Maurice  {Life  of 
F.  D.  Maurice,  i.  p.  i  59). 

VOL.   I.  C  C 


386  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

be  ;  when  I  see  from  their  expressions  that  even  his  Grace 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  and 
others  of  my  brethren  who  have  condemned  me,  have  read 
my  works  very  partially — nay,  that  Archdeacon  Denison 
himself,  when  moving,  in  the  Convocation  of  the  Province 
of  Canterbury,  for  a  Committee  to  sit  upon  my  works,  did 
not  hesitate  to  say,  '  I  have  no  doubt,  at  all  events  I  hope, 
that  there  are  many  here  who  have  not  read  the  First  Part 
of  this  work  ;  and  I  am  sure  there  are  many  who  have  not 
read  the  Second.' 

"  No  !  I  have  no  confidence  in  any  of  these  judgements,  and 
feel  in  no  way  bound  to  defer  to  the  '  voice  of  the  Church ' 
expressed  under  such  circumstances,  even  if  it  had  been 
more  unanimous  than  it  really  is.  For,  when  you  speak  of 
the  '  general  voice  of  the  Church '  having  condemned  me — 
'  not  in  England  only,  but  by  the  Synods  of  many  colonial 
Churches,  and  of  Churches  in  Scotland — by  the  unanimous 
vote  of  the  first  Provincial  Synod  of  Canada,  and  the 
equally  unanimous  vote  of  the  Convention  of  the  Church  in 
America ' — I  must  remind  you  that  these  different  bodies 
do  not  in  any  sense  represent  the  Church  of  England,  with 
which  alone  I  have  to  do.  And  you  are  aware  that  a  very 
large  body  of  the  most  intelligent  members  of  tJiat  Church, 
including  not  a  few  of  the  clergy,  second  to  none  in  learning 
and  piety,  have  not  joined  in  that  condemnation,  and  do 
not  in  any  way  share  in  those  sentiments.  I  repeat,  the 
'  Synods '  on  which  you  lay  so  much  stress,  and  to  whom 
you  ascribe  so  much  authority,  have  no  pretence  to  repre- 
sent the  National  Church,  any  more  than  those  other  bodies 
which  you  have  enumerated  in  a  letter  recently  published 
in  the  Natal  Meirniy,  as  presenting  addresses  to  you,  '  The 
English  Church  Union,  do.  Oxford  Branch,'  &c.  ;  .  .  .  . 
which  latter  bodies,  as  you  well  know,  represent  only  one 
party  in  the  Church  of  England — the  party  which  is  most 
anxious  to  shake  off  the  Royal  supremacy,  and  to  exalt  the 
priestly  order,  and  the  sacramental  system. 

"  Still  less  do  they  represent  the  '  Catholic  Church,'  the  true 
disciples  of  Christ  in  every  land,  the  pure  in  heart  and  true 


1 


1 866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      387 

in  life,  whatever  be  their  form  of  Church  government.  It 
is  my  comfort  to  know  that  I  stand  supported  by  the  wishes 
and  prayers  of  very  many  earnest  and  devout  souls  such  as 
these,  who  form  an  integral  portion  of  the  '  Church  of  the 
Living  God.'  But  were  it  otherwise,  were  the  whole 
religious  '  world '  apparently  against  me,  the  examples  of 
the  past,  even  in  Church  history,  would  suffice  to  support 
and  strengthen  me  for  the  maintenance  of  that  which  I 
believe — rather,  which  I  know — to  be  true,  in  spite  of  the 
temporary  opposition  of  my  brethren,  and  in  the  assurance 
that  the  truth  will  ultimately  triumph. 

"You  put  before  me  two  alternatives,  as  the  'two  only 
courses  '  which  are  open  to  me,  by  adopting  one  or  other 
of  which  I  may  *  spare  us  both  the  pain  and  distress  of 
a  formal  severance '  ;  though  I  confess  I  do  not  see  how  the 
'  severance  '  can  be  more  complete  and  '  formal '  than  it  is 
now,  when  you  have  publicly  denounced  me  in  my  own 
Cathedral  as  an  '  infidel '  and  '  heretic,'  '  led  captive  by  the 
Evil  one.' 

"The  first  of  these  alternatives  is  to  resign  my  office,  and 
'  withdraw  of  my  own  accord  to  lay  communion  '  ;  though 
it  is  difficult  to  see  how  one  who,  according  to  your  views, 
is  so  notorious  an  '  infidel '  and  '  heretic  '  can  be  allowed  to 
exist  even  in  '  lay  communion  '  with  your  Church,  without 
some  '  recantation  '  on  his  part,  of  which  you  say  nothing. 
I  need  hardly  say,  after  all  I  have  said  already  here  and 
elsewhere,  that  I  am  not '  prepared  for  this.'  On  the  con- 
trary, I  feel  that  it  would  be  a  dereliction  of  duty  for  me  to 
do  so — a  cowardly  forsaking  of  a  post  in  which  God's 
Providence  and  the  will  of  my  Sovereign  have  placed  me  ;  in 
which,  however  little  such  strife  is  congenial  to  my  own 
feelings,  I  am  called  to  maintain  the  sacred  cause  of  religious 
liberty  against  the  incroachments  of  the  priestly  system  ;  in 
which  I  have  been  adjured  to  remain  by  not  a  few  of  the 
clergy  and  laity  of  the  Church  of  England,  men  of  devout 
mind,  of  deep  thought,  and  far-reaching  insight,  who  foresee 
clearly  the  dangers  which  threaten  the  Church  at  home 
from    the    growing    extension    of    ecclesiasticism    in    the 

C  C  2 


388  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viil. 

colonies — dangers,  I  may  add,  foreseen  by  none  more 
clearly  than  by  the  present  Bishop  of  Grahamstown  in 
former  days.^ 

"  The  only  other  '  door '  which,  you  say,  '  is  open  to  me,'  is  to 
submit  myself  to  the  judgement  of  '  the  nearest  approach  to 
a  National  Synod  which  we  can  obtain, — such  a  Synod 
'  having  been  asked  for  by  the  Province  of  Canada,'  and  by 
yourself  '  very  earnestly.'  '  To  the  decision  of  such  a  body,' 
you  say,  *  I  will  cheerfully  refer  everything.  To  civil  judges 
you  know  that  I  could  not,  as  a  matter  of  conscience,  refer 
the  decision  of  a  spiritual  question.' 

"  Doubtless  you  would  '  cheerfully  refer  everything  '  to  such  a 
body  as  you  propose  ;  for  you  have  already  told  me,  almost 
in  the  same  sentence,  that  the  very  judges  to  whom  my 
books  would,  in  that  case,  be  submitted,  have  already 
'  unanimously '  approved  of  what  you  have  done.  I  need 
hardly  remind  you  that  it  is  not  necessary  that  Her  Majesty, 
for  the  consideration  of  my  case,  should  nominate  merely  a 
body  of  laymen, — that  a  Commission  might  be  appointed, 
composed  in  part  of  learned  and  unprejudiced  ecclesiastics, 
not  already  committed,  by  violent  extra-judicial  denuncia- 
tions of  my  books,  to  foregone  conclusions  about  them,  as 
well  as  of  laymen  learned  in  the  law, — and  that  in  all  the 
past  history  of  the  Church  of  England,  whenever  such  Com- 
missions have  been  appointed  in  spiritual  cases,  they  have 
always  contained  a  majority  of  laymen.  This,  I  believe,  is 
a  fact  which  the  recent  inquiry  into  the  subject,  published 
with  the  authority  of  the  Bishop  of  London,  has  placed 
beyond  all  doubt. 

"  I  appeal  to  you  once  more,  as  a  loyal  subject  and  professedly 
a  Bishop  of  the  Church  of  England,  not  to  overstep  the 
bounds  of  Church  order,  and  not  to  violate  the  law  of  the 
land.  I  appeal  to  you,  as  I  have  lately  appealed  to  his 
Grace  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  to  address  a  humble 
petition  to  Her  Majesty,  praying  that  a  Commission  may 
be  appointed  to  examine  and  report  upon  my  books,  if  you 
think  they  deserve  to  be  condemned  ;  but,  at  all  events,  to 
^  See  p.  339  ct  scq. 


i866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      389 

resign  the  patent  which  you  hold  from  the  Crown,  before 
you  proceed  to  take  the  steps  which  you  threaten.  If,  how- 
ever, you  feel  it  to  be  a  '  matter  of  conscience,'  not  to  '  refer 
the  decision  of  a  spiritual  question'  to  that  authority  which, 
to  use  your  own  words,  you  '  solemnly  swore  before  God  to 
recognise  when  you  received  your  commission  as  a  Bishop 
and  Metropolitan  of  the  United  Church  of  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland,'  on  the  other  hand  I  feel  it  to  be  on  my  part  a 
'  matter  of  conscience '  to  submit  myself  to  that  authority 
which  I  am  bound  on  oath  to  obey,  and  a  matter  of  loyalty 
not  to  admit  the  jurisdiction  which  you  claim  to  exercise, 
but  which  the  Privy  Council  has  declared  it  would  not  be 
lazvfitl  for  me  to  recognise. 
"  But  I  will  on  my  part  make  a  proposition,  with  which  I 
think  you  should  be  willing  to  comply.  I  am  quite  ready 
to  submit  my  writings,  in  accordance  with  the  provision  in 
your  own  letters  patent,  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury — 
not,  of  course,  to  the  Archbishop  in  person,  for  that  would 
be  a  mere  idle  form,  since  his  Grace  has  repeatedly,  and 
even  within  the  last  month,  condemned  me  unheard,  and 
evidently,  as  I  have  said,  without  having  even  read  my 
books.  But  I  am  ready  to  submit  them  to  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  sitting  in  his  Ecclesiastical  Court,  before 
which  the  case  of  any  clergyman  of  his  province,  and  of 
every  dignitary  below  a  Bishop,  might  be  brought  by  appeal. 
But  your  own  counsel,  Sir  H.  Cairns,  admitted  that  there 
must  be  from  the  Archbishop  a  further  appeal  to  the  Crown  ; 
and  as  you  are  also  aware,  the  Privy  Council  laid  down  the 
law  that  for  us  to  make  an  agreement  with  one  another  to 
ignore  the  supreme  authority  of  the  Crown  in  such  a  case 
would  be  an  illegal  act  on  our  part.  I  am  not  prepared  to 
violate  the  law  of  the  land  for  the  purpose  of  supporting 
ecclesiastical  authority.  I  reserve,  therefore,  my  right  of 
finally  appealing  to  Her  Majesty  ;  and  surely,  as  I  have 
said,  you  cannot  be  justified  in  assuming  beforehand  that 
in  such  a  case  as  this,  involving  questions  of  doctrine,  a 
Commission  would  be  appointed  consisting  only  of  lay 
judges.     The  duty  of  a  loyal  subject  would  seem  to  be  to 


390  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

await  and  see  what  would  actually  be  done,  and  then,  if 
felt  to  be  necessary  as  a  '  matter  of  conscience,'  to  protest 
against  the  constitution  or  the  decision  of  such  a  court,  and 
to  disregard  and  disobey  it,  taking  the  consequences. 

"  In  default  of  my  complying  with  either  of  your  two  sug- 
gestions, you  say  that  you  will  '  separate  me  with  open 
sentence  from  the  communion  of  the  Church,'  and  you  add 
that  '  that  separation  will,  you  have  no  doubt,  be  formally 
recognised  by  the  English  Church  and  by  all  the  Churches 
of  her  communion  throughout  the  world.'  I  cannot  believe 
that  you  have  any  authority  for  this  statement  as  regards 
the  Church  of  England.  If  you  mean  that  the  Convocation 
of  the  Province  of  Canterbury,  under  influence  of  Bishop 
Wilberforce  and  Archdeacon  Denison — the  latter  himself 
condemned  for  '  heresy '  upon  the  '  merits  '  of  his  case,  and 
deprived  of  his  preferments,  by  one  lawful  ecclesiastical 
tribunal,  though  absolved  upon  mere  technical  grounds  by 
another — may  adopt  by  a  majority  in  both  Houses  a  reso- 
lution expressing  approval  of  your  proceedings,  that  indeed 
is  possible  :  only  then  it  is  well  known  that  the  Convocation 
of  one  Province  does  not  in  any  sense  properly  represent 
even  the  clergy  of  that  one  portion  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, and  not  in  the  least  the  laity.  If  you  mean,  however, 
that  the  Bishops  in  England  will  issue — as  they  did  three 
years  ago,  following  the  lead  of  the  Bishop  of  Oxford — a 
series  of  manifestoes,  adopting  your  act,  and  '  formally 
recognising '  its  justice  and  validity,  then  I  do  not  believe 
that  in  every  diocese  this  will  be  done,  and  sure  I  am  that, 
whenever  such  documents  may  be  issued,  there  will  be 
found  multitudes  of  Englishmen,  both  clergy  and  laity, 
even  of  those  who  do  not  sympathise  with  me,  who  would 
utterly  dissent  from  such  unwarrantable  and  unlawful  pro- 
ceedings, who  would  regard  these  '  admonitions '  as  not 
'  godly,'  and  would  refuse  to  '  follow '  them. 

'  But,  however  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  you  hold  your 
office,  as  Metropolitan  in  the  Church  of  England,  solely  by 
the  Queen's  appointment,  and  that  under  that  authority  you 
have  no  power  whatever  to  pronounce  such  a  '  sentence,'  any 


1 866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       391 

more  than  to  deprive  me,  as  you  suppose  yourself  already  to 
have  actually  done,  of  all  power  '  in  any  way  to  minister  in 
divine  offices '  or  '  to  exercise  any  sacred  offices  whatever  in 
the  Church  of  God,'  pretending  thus  to  an  universal  jurisdic- 
tion. It  is  true  that  in  this  age  of  the  world  such  '  sentences  ' 
have  lost  their  terrors  for  earnest  and  thinking  men,  who, 
believing  in  the  presence  of  the  Living  God  in  the  world, 
and  not  in  the  existence  of  a  spiritual  caste  to  whom  the 
Supreme  King  has  delegated  his  power,  will  remember  that 
'the  curse  causeless  shall  not  come,'  and  go  about  their  work 
as  calmly  as  ever,  content  to  say  '  Let  them  curse,  but  bless 
Thou.'  Your  '  sentence  of  excommunication  '  would  fall  as 
lightly  on  me  as  that  of  '  deprivation,'  or  as  that  which  is 
annually  launched  by  the  Bishop  of  Rome  on  both  of  us. 

"  But  if  you  really  believe  in  these  spiritual  powers  which  you 
profess  to  wield,  and  desire  to  show  the  world  that  you  trust 
in  them,  and  not  in  the  arm  of  flesh,  then  let  the  battle  be 
fought  out,  if  it  must  be,  openly  and  fairly  between  us.  I 
declare  that  I  belong  to  the  Church  of  England,  and  that 
to  her  laws  I  will  submit  myself,  by  her  decisions  I  will  be 
bound.  You  declare  that  you  do  not  belong  to  the  Church 
of  England — that  you  will  not  recognise  the  Queen's  su- 
premacy, nor  accept  the  decision  of  her  Supreme  Courts  of 
Appeal — that  you  belong  to  the  Church  of  South  Africa. 
Let  it,  then,  be  distinctly  understood  that  we  represent  two 
utterly  discordant  principles — on  the  one  hand,  that  of  State 
supremacy,  maintained  as  a  part  of  the  very  Constitution  of 
our  National  Church,  the  safeguard  of  her  liberties,  the 
pledge  that,  from  time  to  time,  as  knowledge  advances,  her 
system  shall  be  modified  (as  it  has  so  lately  been)  to  meet 
the  demands  of  the  age  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  of 
Clerical  supremacy,  which  secures  that  certain  dogmatic 
teachings — 'what  the  Catholic  Church,  during  the  first 
thousand  years  of  her  history,  declared  to  be  or  received  as 
the  true  faith' — shall  be  bound  as  a  yoke  upon  all  future 
ages,  as  Infallible,  Divine,  Eternal  Truth. 

"  But,  if  this  is  the  case,  may  I  not  say  in  your  ov.-n   words 
'  Surely  you  ought  as  a  true  man  to  say  so,'  by  giving   up 


392  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

at  once  your  patent,  and  laying  aside   all  the  power  and 
influence  which  you  now  exercise,  by  virtue  of  your  apparent 
subjection  to  the  Crown,  and  your  apparent  organic  con- 
nexion with  the  National  Church  ?     It  is  true  this  would 
involve  a  great  sacrifice  of  '  worldly '  power — not  only  of 
'position  and  endowment,'  but  of  lands,  houses,  schools, 
churches,  which  have  been  set  apart  by  the  Government 
and  others  expressly  for  the  purposes  of  the  members  of 
the  Church  of  England.     It  would  involve  also,  I  imagine, 
the  loss  of  that  strongest  of  all  '  worldly '  means  of  coercion, 
which,  while  professing  to  use  only  '  spiritual '  weapons,  you 
have  wielded  with   great    effect,  and,  in  the  case  of  one 
clergyman   of  my  diocese,  most  unsparingly,  and,   I   must 
add,  in  a  way  which  I  cannot  justify,  by  means  of  the  funds 
of  the  Gospel  Propagation  Society ;    for  these,  I  presume, 
could  hardly  be  granted  to  support  the  claims  of  a  Bishop 
of  the  '  Church  of  South  Africa '  in  opposition  to  another 
lawful  Bishop  of  the  '  Church  of  England,'  who  might  be 
nominated  by  Royal  mandate  as  Bishop  of  Capetown.     But 
your  position  would  then  be  at  all  events  consistent  with 
your  avowed  principles,  and   intelligible  to  many  who  are 
now  beguiled  by  the  double  appearance  of  things.     And  it 
is  obvious  that  any  *  sentence '  of  excommunication,  which 
you  might  think  it  necessary  to  issue,  might  then  be  issued, 
if   not  without  breach   of    Christian   charity,   yet  at   least 
without    the    scandal    of  disloyalty  and    disregard    of  the 
conditions   on   which  you   received   from   the   Crown   your 
appointment    and    dignity   as    Bishop    of    Capetown  and 
Metropolitan. 
"  You  go  on  to  say  that  the  endowments  of  this  see  were 
'  obtained  by  you  for  far  other  teaching  than  mine.'     If  you 
mean  by  this  that  they  were  raised  with  the  express  design 
of  promoting,  with  the  help  of  the  incumbent  of  this  see, 
the  ecclesiastical  system   of  the   Church  of  South  Africa, 
with  a  view  of  its  reacting  at  some  future  day,  in  common 
with  that  of  other  colonial  Churches,  on  the  system  of  the 
mother  Church  at  home, — then  I  say,  as  I  have  said  before, 
that  the  gatherer  and  donors  deserve  to  be  disappointed ; 


i866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      393 

that  I  utterly  disclaim  having  ever  been  a  party  to  such  an 
arrangement ;  that  I  should  deem  it  then,  as  I  should  deem 
it  now,  to  be  a  treasonable  conspiracy  against  the  very  life 
and  well-being  of  our  National  Church.     But,  if  nothing  of 
this  kind  is  meant,  then   I   say  that  these  funds  were  raised, 
as  I  suppose,  from  all  quarters,  from  persons  of  very  differ- 
ent views  in  the  Church  of  England,  from   High  Church, 
Low  Church,  and  Broad  Church,  Tractarian  and  Erastian  ; 
by   donations    and    subscriptions,    at    meetings    and    after 
sermons,  for  the  express  purpose  of  founding  a  Bishopric 
which  should  be  subject  to  the  fundamental    laws  of  the 
Church  of  England  ;    and,  in  many  cases,  from  those  who 
would  heartily  rejoice  in  the  work  which  I  am  doing,  or 
trying  to  do. 
"As  regards  those  who  may  choose  to  join  the  threatened 
South  African    '  schism '  in  this  colony,  I  do  not  see  any 
reason  for  supposing  that  they  would  find  it  necessary  to 
meet  with  their  Bishop  in  '  dens  and  caves,'  while  building 
their  own   places  of  worship.      It  would  be   easy  to  hire 
rooms  both  in  Maritzburg  and  Durban  ;  though  I  doubt  if 
the  number  of  worshippers  in  each  place  would  be  so  large 
as  you  suppose — misled,  it  may  be,   by  too   zealous  and 
sanguine  informants.     But  when  you  say  '  You  know  that 
all  earnestness  and  all  deep  religious  conviction  would  be 
against  you,'  I  cannot  but  think  that  you  have  lost  sight  for 
a  moment  of  what  is  clue  to  the  conscientious  feelings  of 
multitudes  who  differ  from  you,  and  who  have  placed  them- 
selves by  my  side  in  this  controversy.     It  is  the  same  kind 
of  language   as   that  which   you  employed  before  in   my 
Cathedral  church,  when   you  told   my  flock  that  all  good 
people  were  '  avowedly  on  God's  side,'  and  therefore  stood 
aloof  from  me ;  '  all  that  would  be  respectable  in  the  world, 
ignorant  and  careless  though  some  be, — all  but  the  scoffer 
and  unbeliever.' 
"  I  must  be  allowed  to  say  that   I  do  not  '  know '  this  ;  that  I 
know  the  very  contrary ;    that,  among  those  who  are  zvit/i 
me  in  England  and  Natal,  among  those  who  read  my  works 
with  interest  and  approbation,  ....  there  are  many  most 


394  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

excellent  and  estimable  persons,  of  'earnest  and  deep 
religious  conviction,'  who  share  with  me  the  feeling  that 
such  work  as  you  are  now  doing,  so  far  as  it  is  effective, 
must  tend  to  destroy  the  true  life  of  any  Church  ;  and  that 
the  work  which  I  am  trying  to  do  is  that  which  must  be 
done — may  it  only  be  done  by  more  powerful  agents  ! — to 
secure   the   permanence   and    prosperity   of    the    National 

Church 

"  I  am,  my  brother, 

"  Yours  faithfully  in  Christ, 

"  J.  W.  Natal." 

The  informal  letter  of  Bishop  Gray,  to  which  the  Bishop 
thus  calmly  and  conclusively  replied,  was  certainly  a  mar- 
vellous production.  If  it  betrayed  a  strange  hankering  after 
an  ecclesiastical  despotism,  it  betrayed  also  an  ignorant 
narrowness  not  less  astonishing.  Not  content  with  differing 
from  Bishop  Thirlwall  or  Jeremy  Taylor — to  say  nothing  of 
Hammond  and  Waterland,  Chrysostom  or  Ambrose — on  the 
subject  of  the  human  knowledge  of  Christ,  Bishop  Gray 
flatly  condemned  them  all ;  and  this  condemnation  of  what 
he,  in  his  haste,  regarded  as  a  notion  almost  exclusively 
confined  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  was  practically  the  pivot  on 
which  the  arguments  in  the  so-called  Capetown  trial  mainly 
turned.  Bishop  Gray  was  ready  to  refer  Bishop  Colenso's 
case  to  Synods  or  Councils  of  various  kinds  ;  but  he  forgot 
that  if  the  Royal  supremacy  had  any  meaning  or  any 
purpose,  it  was  to  prevent  the  bringing  of  ecclesiastical  causes 
for  final  settlement  before  any  such  tribunals. 

The  official  letter  forwarded  to  Bishop  Colenso  through  his 
own  Dean  has  in  part  been  noticed  already.^  We  need  only 
mark  here  that  one  of  the  reasons  now  given  for  refusing  to 
him  an  appeal  to  the  Queen  in  Council  was  the  provision,  "  in 
the  letters  patent  founding  the  several  sees  of  this  province, 


See  p.  378. 


I 


1865.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       395 

that  the  gravest  spiritual  causes  in  this  portion  of  the  Church 
shall  be  finally  decided  by  Bishops  only," — in  other  words, 
that  English  Churchmen  were  to  be  under  one  law,  one 
system,  one  discipline  at  home,  and  under  a  wholly  different 
law,  system,  and  discipline  in  the  colonies  ;  and  here  again 
are  spiritual  powers  derived  from  a  civil  instrument,  and 
exercised  by  an  officer  who  protests  against  and  disavows  that 
subordination  to  the  State  which  is  the  necessary  condition 
of  every  clergyman  in  England,  from  the  Archbishops  down- 
wards. Another  reason  was  the  absence  of  any  law,  either  of 
the  Church  or  of  the  State,  empowering  the  Queen,  either  in 
person  or  by  deputy,  to  hear  and  decide  spiritual  causes  for 
colonial  Churches,  which  were  declared  to  be  purely  voluntary 
religious  associations.  In  other  words,  by  the  mere  fact  of 
leaving  England,  members  of  the  Church  of  England,  on  this 
theory,  exchanged  their  condition  of  freedom  for  one  of  slavery. 
But  no  real  effort  was  made  to  bring  the  case  before  the 
Crown,  or  into  a  court  from  which  it  could  go  by  appeal  to 
the  Crown  ;  and  the  plea,  moreover,  was  thoroughly  dis- 
ingenuous. Had  such  a  law  been  forthcoming.  Bishop  Gray 
must  have  protested  against  it,  and  found  some  means  of 
evading  it.  He  had  said  as  plainly  as  possible  that  he  could 
not  recognise  the  jurisdiction  of  the  civil  tribunal  of  the  Privy 
Council  ;  and  it  was  at  least  superfluous  to  say  that  he  could 
find  no  law  requiring  him  to  do  that  which  he  was  steadily 
resolved  in  any  case  not  to  do.  Dean  Green  was  only  a 
trifle  more  extravagant  than  his  Metropolitan  when  he  com- 
pared the  submission  of  Churchmen  to  the  authority  of  the 
Crown  with  the  litigation  of  Corinthian  Christians  in  heathen 
courts,  which  St.  Paul  vehemently  denounced. 

But  of  misrepresentation  and  distortion  of  facts  on  the  part 
of  Bishop  Gray  and  his  supporters  there  was  no  end.  The 
Bishop  of  Natal  was  constrained  to  address  himself  to  the 
Archbishop   of  Canterbury,  to  call  his   attention    simply  to 


I 


396  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

such  matters  of  fact.  The  clergy  of  Natal  had  been  warned 
that  "  if  any  one  of  them  communicated  with  Dr.  Colenso, 
they  would  thereby  be  excluded  from  any  cure  in  Englaud  "  ; 
and  it  was  hinted  or  asserted  that  this  statement  came  from 
the  Archbishop  himself 

To  THE  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  November  30,  1865. 

..."  I  cannot  and  do  not  believe  it  possible  that  such  a 
hint  can  have  been  contained  in  your  Grace's  letter.  Yet  I 
cannot  forget  the  fact  that  Bishop  Gray's  course  of  pro- 
ceeding has  been  publicly  indorsed  with  your  Grace's  full 
approval,  though  I  do  not  suppose  your  Grace  is  aware  that 
part  of  that  proceeding  was  '  to  advise  by  letter  the  clergy- 
man of  Durban  to  commit  a  brawl  in  the  church  by  reading 
the  Communion  Service  while  the  Bishop  preached,'  and 
another,  '  to  tell  one  of  the  churchwardens  at  Durban,  when 
informed  that  steps  might  be  taken  by  the  laity  to  prevent 
the  reading  during  Divine  service  of  the  illegal  docu- 
ment deposing  Bishop  Colenso,  that,  if  all  the  devils  in  hell 
were  to  appear  next  day,  nothing  should  prevent  his  having 
the  document  read,'    ,    .    . 

"  I  have  applied  for  a  copy  of  your  Grace's  letter,  and  have 
been  informed  by  the  Dean  that  it  has  been  sent  for  publi- 
cation to  the  Natal  Mercury^  but  that  the  extract  which  I 
require  is  as  follows  :  '  I  do  not  see  how  you  can  accept 
Dr.  Colenso  as  your  Bishop  without  identifying  yourselves 
with  his  errors.'  Your  Grace  has  thus  distinctly  and 
publicly  advised  the  clergy  of  this  diocese,  professing  to  be 
clergy  of  the  United  Church  of  England  and  Ireland, 
receiving  their  stipends  as  such  from  the  colonial  Treasury 
and  from  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel, 
and  ministering  within  buildings  set  apart  for  that  Church, 
to  rebel  openly  against  their  lawful  Bishop,  on  the  ground 
of  certain  '  errors '  of  which  your  Grace  pronounces  me  to 
be  guilty.  ...  I  feel  that  I  have  now  a  right  to  ask 
your  Grace,  before  my  fellow-countrymen,  to  point  out  as 


1 866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      397 

publicly  and  distinctly,  what  those  '  errors '  are  of  mine  to 
which  your  Grace  refers,  if  any  such  have  been  already  con- 
demned by  the  existing  laws  of  the  Church  of  England. 
Or  should  your  Grace  not  be  able — as  I  venture  to  believe 
you  will  not — to  produce  any  passages  of  my  works,  for 
which  the  humblest  deacon  could  have  been  ejected  from 
his  cure  by  any  of  the  Bishops  in  England,  upon  the 
principles  by  which  the  Church  of  England  is  governed,  as 
laid  down  in  any  judgement  hitherto  given,  then  I  feel  that 
I  have  a  right  to  demand,  in  the  name  of  common  justice, that 
your  Grace  should  present  a  petition  to  the  Queen,  specifying 
those  parts  of  my  writings  which  you  deem  to  be  '  errors  ' 
of  such  kind  as  to  justify  my  deposition,  and  praying  that 
Her  Majesty  would  be  pleased  to  appoint  a  Commission  to 
examine  into  the  justice  of  the  charge. 
"  I  am  a  Bishop  of  the  United  Church  of  England  and  Ireland, 
and  not  one  of  the  Church  of  South  Africa,  with  which,  in 
common  with  the  great  body  of  the  laity  of  Natal,  I  neither 
have,  nor  wish  to  have,  at  the  present  time,  any  very  intimate 
relations.  And  I  desire  for  them  and  their  children,  as  well 
as  for  myself,  the  right  to  enjoy  the  liberties,  and  be  judged 
by  the  laws,  of  that  Church  to  which  it  is  our  privilege  and 

our  pride  to  belong We  count  it  no  evil,  as  your 

Grace  implies,  but  a  great  advantage,  to  be  ruled  by  the 
decisions  of  her  Supreme  Courts  of  Appeal,  and  to  be  saved 
thereby  from  the  arbitrary  and  prejudiced  proceedings  of 
irresponsible  ecclesiastical  judges.  So  long  as  the  Church  of 
England  is  maintained  as  the  National  Established  Church 
in  England,  so  long  do  we  desire  of  our  own  free  choice  to 
maintain  our  connexion  with  it,  and  submit  ourselves  volun- 
tarily to  its  laws,  which  are  made  by  the  State  and  by  the 
Queen,  and  not  by  the  clergy." 

Of  the  Archbishop's  reply  to  this  letter  this  much  at  least 
must  be  said,  that  it  reveals  Dr.  Longley's  absolute  unfitness 
for  the  office  of  a  judge.  He  knew  perfectly  well  that  if  the 
Critical  Examitiation  of  the  PentateucJL  had  been  the  work  of 
the  Bishop  of  London   instead   of  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  the 


398  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

course,  if  any,  taken  with  regard  to  it  must  have  been  ex- 
tremely dififerent.  He  may  also  have  felt  that  in  all  likelihood 
a  time  of  bluster  would  in  that  case  have  been  followed  by  a 
tacit  agreement  to  leave  matters  alone.  Anathemas  and  con- 
demnation by  the  Convocation  of  the  Province  of  Canterbury 
would  have  availed  nothing  towards  the  deposition  of  a 
Bishop  of  London  ;  and  the  promoter  of  any  suit  against 
him  would  probably  have  been  advised  that  the  chances  of 
conviction  before  the  Queen  in  Council  were  very  small,  and 
possibly  that  no  passages  were  forthcoming  on  which  any 
penal  charges  could  be  grounded.  As  to  the  vast  mass  of 
accusations  brought  against  Bishop  Colenso  by  the  prose- 
cuting clergy  at  Capetown,  almost  every  one  of  these  would 
have  been  swept  away  like  cobwebs  on  the  first  breath  of 
judicial  inquiry  in  England.  It  was  worse  than  useless,  there- 
fore, for  the  Archbishop  to  refer  to  the  indictment  in  that 
so-called  trial  as  furnishing  the  least  warrant  for  supposing 
that  such  an  indictment  could  be  preferred  against  any  clergy- 
man in  England.  Yet  this  is  what  Dr.  Longley,  as  Primate  of 
England,  did  not  scruple  to  do. 


"  I  have  no  hesitation,"  he  said  (February  lo,  1866),  "  in  avowing 
that,  according  to  my  belief,  you  have  been  duly  and  canoni- 
cally  deposed  from  your  spiritual  office,  according  to  the 
common  laws  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  as  set  forth  in  the  con- 
cluding paragraph  of  the  Twenty-sixth  Article  of  the  Church 
of  England  ;  and  I  must  decline  to  hold  myself  responsible 
to  you  for  entertaining  such  a  belief.  I  have  never  obtruded 
this  opinion  upon  others,  in  my  capacity  as  Primate  of  the 
United  Church  of  England  and  Ireland  ;  but  I  have  not 
hesitated  to  avow  my  private    opinion  when    it  has   been 

sought  for I  never  expected  that  my  letter  would 

have  been  given  to  the  public,  nor  am  I  responsible  for  the 
fact ;  but  as  those  to  whom  I  addressed  it  have  thought  fit 
to  publish  a  portion  of  it,  I  do  not  disavow  the  sentiment 
therein  expressed.     At  any  rate,  I  could  not  have  objected 


I 


i866.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.       399 

to  the  course  they  thus  took  from  any  apprehension  that  I 
might  one  day  be  called  to  sit  as  a  judge  in  your  case, 
because  I  have  high  legal  authority  for  saying  that  there 
appears  to  be  now  no  mode  of  proceeding  by  which  I  could 
be  called  upon  to  act  in  this  capacity.  The  censure,  there- 
fore, which  you  would  impute  to  mc  on  this  ground  proves 
to  be  entirely  without  foundation. 
"As  you  ask  me  to  point  out  the  errors  to  which  I  have 
alluded,  I  have  merely  to  refer  you  to  the  reasons  for  your 
deposition,  as  stated  in  the  judgement  of  deprivation  passed 
upon  you,  and  to  state  my  belief  that  for  such  errors  in 
doctrine  an  English  clergyman  could  be  ejected  from  his 
cure." 

That  Archbishop  Longley  might  not  have  been  called  upon 
to  act  in  a  judicial  capacity,  had  Dr.  Tait  instead  of  Dr. 
Colenso  been  the  author  of  the  Critical  Examination  of  the 
Pentateuch,  is  not  so  certain  as  the  Primate  supposed  ;  but 
assuredly  if  his  private  opinion  had  been  put  forth  before 
such  a  trial  as  a  public  declaration  of  his  state  of  mind  he 
must  have  insured  his  own  exclusion  from  such  a  tribunal,  as 
entirely  as  any  juryman  who  should  avow  his  belief  in  the 
guilt  of  a  prisoner  before  his  trial  was  begun.  He  could  not 
fail  to  know  that  the  propositions  charged  against  Bishop 
Colenso  at  Capetown  might  be  penal  errors,  and  yet  it  was 
possible  that  they  had  not  been  proved,  and  perhaps  could 
not  be  proved  against  him.  It  is  hard,  indeed,  to  see  how  he 
could,  further,  fail  to  know  that  a  large  number  of  these 
charges  had  been  cleared  away  by  recent  decisions  of  the 
Judicial  Committee,  and  therefore  were  no  longer  admissible 
in  future  indictments.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this.  Archbishop 
Longley  could  speak  thus  confidently  of  the  ejection  of  Eng- 
lish clergymen  for  charges  many  of  which  could  not  be  even 
formulated  against  them.  In  fact.  Archbishop  Longley  had 
said  deliberately  what  he  either  knew,  or  ought  to  have  known 
to  be  not  true. 


400  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

On  the  various  counts  of  the  indictment  at  Capetown  some- 
thing has  been  said  already.^.     A  few  remarks  may  bring  out 
more  clearly  the  results  which  might  be  expected  to  follow  from 
such  charges  if  preferred  against  a  clergyman  in  this  country. 
For  the  whole  of  them,  as  urged  against  the  Bishop  of  Natal, 
Archbishop  Longley's  reference  to  the  Twenty-sixth  Article 
was  altogether  inapplicable.     He  had  not  been  rightly  tried, 
and  he  had  not  by  just  judgement  been  deposed.     When  we 
come  to  particulars,  we  find,  on  the  first  head,  that  the  Bishop 
of  Natal's  patent  says  nothing  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Metro- 
politan over  himself,  and  that  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  English 
Metropolitans  have  jurisdiction  over  their  suffragans.     On  the 
second  head,  it  is  certain  that  the  references  made  from  time 
to  time  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal  to  the  opinion  and  advice  of 
Bishop  Gray  involved  no  pledge  of  submission,  if  need  be,  to 
be  tried  and  deposed  by  him.     On  the  third  head,  we  find  that 
the  principles  by  which  the  English  ecclesiastical  courts  are 
guided    differ    indefinitely   and    most    widely  from  those  by 
which  Bishop  Gray  claimed  to  pass  judgement.    On  the  fourth 
head,  which  related  to  Holy  Scripture,  Bishop  Gray  and  his 
advisers  made  assumptions  which  must  end  in  the  conviction 
of  every  one  brought  before  his  tribunal,  but  which  the  judge 
of  the  Arches  Court  had  emphatically  repudiated.^    According 
to  Bishop  Gray,  the  Church  of  England  "  holds  what  the  Church 
has  always  held,"  and  this  common  faith  commits  her  to  the 
decisions  of  Councils  for  the  first  thousand  years  of  the  history 
of  Christendom,  "  silence  upon  any  particular  point  of  faith,  or 
upon  any  great  question  of  religion  [being]    no  reason    for 
supposing  that  the"'  Church  of  England  was  indifferent  to  that 
portion  of  the  faith."      Of  the  soundness  of  this  argument 
Bishop  Gray  asserted  with  haughty  assurance  that  he  had  no 
doubt.     In  the  Gorham  judgement  it  had  been   "  established 

^  See  p.  280  ct  scq.  ^  See  p.  325. 


1865.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TIBIAL.      401 

that  ail  theological  doctrines  not  determined  by  the  Articles  or 
formularies  are  open  questions."  On  the  one  side  we  have 
the  Bishop  of  Capetown's  dreams,  dreams  which  have  inspired 
the  ecclesiastical  zealots  of  all  ages  :  on  the  other  we  have  the 
sober  utterances  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Appeal  for  the 
Church  of  England.  The  Gorham  judgement  scatters  to  the 
winds  by  anticipation  the  truculent  theories  of  Bishop  Gray. 

"  If  the  case  be,  as  undoubtedly  it  is,  that  in  the  Church  of 
England  many  points  of  theological  doctrine  have  not  been 
decided,  then  the  first  and  great  question  which  arises  in 
such  cases  as  the  present  is,  whether  the  disputed  point  is, 
or  was  meant  to  be,  settled  at  all,  or  whether  it  is  left  open 
for  each  member  of  the  Church  to  decide  for  himself 
according  to  his  own  conscientious  opinion.  If  there  be 
any  doctrine  on  which  the  Articles  are  silent  or  ambigu- 
ously expressed,  so  as  to  be  capable  of  two  meanings,  we 
must  suppose  that  it  was  intended  to  leave  that  doctrine 
to  private  judgement,  unless  the  rubrics  and  formularies 
distinctly  decide  it.  If  they  do,  we  must  conclude  that  the 
doctrine  so  decided  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Church.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  if  the  expressions  used  in  the  rubric  and 
formularies  are  ambiguous,  it  is  not  to  be  concluded  that 
the  Church  meant  to  establish  indirectly  as  a  doctrine 
that  which  it  did  not  establish  directly  as  such  by  the 
Articles  of  Faith — the  code  avowedly  made  for  the  avoid- 
ing of  diversities  of  opinion  and  for  the  establishing  of 
consent  touching  true  religion." 

In  other  words,  we  have  on  the  one  side  a  clearly-defined 
principle  ;  on  the  other,  we  have  a  grim  apparatus  for  the 
fabrication  of  arbitrary  and  constructive  treasons. 

The  fifth  head  of  Bishop  Gray's  "judgement"  was  a  plain 
defiance  of  the  judge  of  the  Court  of  Arches.  Dr.  Lushington 
had  ruled  that  the  declaration  of  belief  in  the  Holy  Scriptures 
made  by  candidates  for  ordination  must  be  interpreted  as 
meaning  that  the  Scriptures  contained  everything  necessary 
VOL.    I.  D  D  ' 


402  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

to  salvation,  and  that  to  that  extent  they  have  the  direct 
sanction  of  the  Almighty.^  In  this  decision  Bishop  Gray 
flatly  refused  to  "  concur."  "  It  is  a  wrong,"  he  said,  "  to  the 
Church  thus  to  limit  the  meaning  and  diminish  the  force  of 
its  plain  language."  It  was,  in  short,  a  wrong  and  a  hardship 
to  himself  to  be  thus  interfered  with  in  the  exercise  of  an 
instrument  admirably  adapted  for  the  conviction  of  every 
accused  person  ;  but  it  was  no  wrong  and  no  hardship  to  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  to  be  arraigned  and  condemned  in  Southern 
Africa  on  charges  which  could  not  even  be  entertained  in 
England.  Incumbents  in  this  country  were  perfectly  free  to 
use  language  which  was  to  be  regarded  at  Capetown  as  justi- 
fying his  deposition,  and  his  excommunication  for  not  yield- 
ing obedience  to  that  sentence  ;  and  yet  this  was  no  denial  of 
justice  to  the  accused. 

Under  the  sixth  head  Bishop  Gray  objected  to  the  Gorham 
judgement  as  taking  an  inadequate  view  of  the  Sacrament  of 
Baptism,  and  he  therefore  condemned  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
for  holding  the  same  inadequate  view.  Under  the  seventh 
he  admitted  that  the  passage  impugned  on  the  subject  of  the 
Atonement 

"was  not  so  at  variance  with  [the  doctrine]  of  the  Church  as 
to  call  for  any  condemnation,  did  it  stand  alone.  There 
are,  however,  other  passages  in  his  work  besides  those  com- 
plained of  which  show  that  he  uses  the  words  *  atonement,' 
'redemption,'  'sacrifice,'  'satisfaction,'  'propitiation,' — which 
are,  so  to  speak,  ecclesiastical  and  historical  words — in  a 
sense  of  his  own,  that  he  does  not  mean  what  the  Church 

intends   by  them I   must  consider  the  charge   as 

proved," — 

that  is,  he  condemns,  while  he  confesses  that  the  passages 
arraigned  do  not  furnish  materials  for  condemnation.  It  is 
an  amazing  thing ;  but  "  ecclesiastical  words "  are  ready  to 

1  See  p.  323. 


i 


1865.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      403 

hand,  and  the  sense  in  which  he  interprets  those  words 
supplies  a  safe  and  easy  path  to  the  sentence.  The  ruling 
of  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  that  "the 
accuser  is,  for  the  purpose  of  the  charge,  confined  to  the 
passages  which  are  included  and  set  out  in  the  articles  as 
the  matter  of  the  accusation,"  was  for  him  not  worth 
consideration. 

Such  are  the  main  grounds  on  which  Bishop  Gray  claimed 
the  right  to  try,  and,  on  condemnation,  to  depose,  Bishop 
Colenso,  and  it  was  with  regard  to  such  grounds  as  these 
that  Archbishop  Longley  stood  committed  to  the  belief  that 
they  would  be  sufficient  for  the  deprivation  of  an  English 
beneficed  clergyman.  Whatever  his  belief  might  be,  the 
statement  was  false.  It  is  quite  certain  that  they  could  not 
be  applied  in  this  country.  It  is  equally  certain  that  if  they 
could  be  applied  they  would,  in  Dean  Stanley's  words, 

"  exclude  every  one  possessed  of  a  moderate  knowledge  of 
Biblical  criticism,  or  even  of  intelligence  enough  to  dis- 
believe the  universal  deluge  ;  and  equally  would  they 
exclude  every  party  in  the  Church  but  that  in  whose 
name  Bishop  Gray  tries  to  lord  it  over  the  South  African 
dioceses,  assuming  on  all  occasions  that  mere  Church 
membership  is  a  sufficient  recognition  of  its  principles, 
though  both  common  notoriety,  and  the  opposition  which 
he  has  himself  encountered  from  far  other  quarters  than 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  and  his  friends,  must  have  made  him 
as  well  aware  as  any  man  that  that  party  numbers  no 
majority  of  the  clergy,  and  but  an  insignificant  proportion 
of  the  laity,  of  this  great  Church  and  nation." 

Twelve  years  later,  1880,  the  old  allegations  of  Bishop 
Gray,  repeated  often,  and  as  often  refuted,  were  brought 
forward  once  more  by  his  successor,  Bishop  Jones,  who  did 
what  he  could  to  fasten  again  a  moral  stigma  on  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  in  the  following  words  : — 

D  D  2 


404  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

"  There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  moral  obligation  which  no  human 
law  can  inforce,  but  which  is  paramount  in  foro  conscienticB. 
And  surely  there  is  a  moral  obligation  on  a  Bishop  who  has 
recognised  his  Metropolitan  as  his  judge  by  accepting  his 
letters  patent,  and  who  has,  at  the  most  solemn  moment 
of  his  life,  bound  himself  by  a  solemn  oath  to  render  due 
obedience  to  his  Metropolitan,  to  obey  the  sentence  which, 
even  though  not  binding  in  civil  law,  that  Metropolitan  in 
his  court,  with  the  consent  of  the  Bishops  of  his  Province 
has  pronounced  against  him,  and  which  the  Synod  of  the 
Bishops  of  the  Province  at  the  same  time  has  solemnly 
accepted." 

This  charge  has  been  proved  to  be  absolutely  without 
foundation,  and  it  would  be  mere  waste  of  time  to  go  over 
ground  already  traversed  with  care.  The  language  of  Bishop 
Cotterill  has  shown  that  the  opposition  to  the  ecclesiastical 
theories  of  Bishop  Gray  was  not  confined  to  the  Bishop  of 
Natal ;  and  Bishop  Jones  deserves  no  further  reply  than  that 
he  has  misinterpreted  declarations  set  forth  in  the  plainest 
language.  It  is  true  that,  by  the  letters  patent  granted  to 
him.  Bishop  Colenso  was  to  be 

"  subject  and  subordinate  to  the  see  of  Capetown  and  to  the 
Bishop  thereof ; " 

but  it  was  declared  that  he  should  be  subject  only 

"  in  the  same  manner  as  any  Bishop  of  any  see  within  the 
Province  of  Canterbury  is  under  the  authority  of  the 
Archiepiscopal  see  of  that  Province  and  the  Archbishop 
of  the  same  ;  " 

and  it  has  certainly  never  been  maintained  that  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  can  try,  sentence,  and  depose  his  suffragans 
without  appeal ;  and  from  the  Primate  appeal  can  lie  only  to 
the  Crown.  But  it  is  not  less  true  that  by  the  letters  patent 
of  Dr.  Gray  the  Sovereign  declared  that  the  Bishop  of 
Capetown 


I 


1865.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      405 

"  shall  be  subject  and  subordinate  to  the  Metropolitical  see  of 
Canterbury  and  to  the  Archbishops  thereof,  and  in  the  same 
manner  as  any  Bishop  of  any  see  within  the  Province  of 
Canterbury  is  under  the  same  Metropolitical  see  and  the 
Archbishops  thereof ; " 

and  it  cannot  be  pretended  that  the  former  could  be  tried, 
condemned,  and  deprived  by  the  latter  without  appeal,  and 
this  appeal  must  of  necessity  be  to  the  Crown,  By  the  so- 
called  judgement  at  Capetown,  Bishop  Gray  assumed  to  deprive 
Bishop  Colenso  of  a  right  to  the  loss  of  which  it  cannot  for 
a  moment  be  supposed  that  he  would  himself  have  submitted, 
had  he  been  arraigned  before  the  tribunal  of  the  Primate. 
According  to  the  second  patent  granted  to  Bishop  Gray,  it  is 
stated  that  he  is  to  be 

^^  subject  to  the  general  superintendence  and  revision  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  subordinate  to  the  Archi- 
episcopal  see  of  the  Province  of  Canterbury," 

These  words  settle  absolutely  the  relations  between  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown  and  his  suffragans,  and  between  these  and 
the  English  Primate,  These  relations  involve  the  right  of 
appeal  to  the  Crown  ;  and  this  right  cannot  be  taken  away, 
or  these  relations  affected,  by  the  clause  in  Bishop's  Gray's 
second  patent  which  authorised  him 

"  to  exercise  Metropolitan  jurisdiction  over  the  Bishops  of 
Grahamstown  and  Natal,  and  all  the  clergy  in  their 
dioceses," 

This  authorisation,  whatever  it  be,  must  be  taken  as  involving 
nothing  antagonistic  to  the  former;  and  the  question  is  there- 
fore settled  without  going  into  further  controversy  with 
reference  to  this  patent.  This  question  has  been  sufficiently 
examined  by  Bishop  Cotterill  in  the  letters  already  cited  ; 
but  when   all   doubt   on    the   subject   has    been    removed    by 


4o6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

these  general  considerations,  it  becomes  pertinent  to  lay 
stress  on  the  fact  that  Bishop  Gray's  second  patent,  dated 
December  8,  1853,  was  not  issued  till  a  fortnight  after  those 
issued  to  the  Bishops  of  Grahamstown  and  Natal,  dated 
November  23,  1853. 

"  Such  a  clause,"  the  Bishop  of  Natal  remarks,  in  his  reply  to 
Bishop  Jones,  in  1880,  "would  not  legally  override  my 
older  patent  ;  nor  would  it  bind  me  in  any  sense  morally, 
unless  I  had  been  informed  of  its  existence  before  accept- 
ing my  own  patent.  In  point  of  fact,  I  was  not  aware  of 
it  until  I  saw  the  Capetown  patent  in  the  report  of  the 
proceedings  of  the  first  Synod  of  Capetown,  published  in 
1857.  Nor  was  it  likely  that  I  should  have  known  anything 
about  it,  since  on  November  15,  1858,  Bishop  Cotterill  wrote 
to  me  :  '  It  shows  how  loosely  these  matters  are  managed, 
that  both  the  Archbishop  and  the  Government  (I  mean 
officials  at  the  Colonial  Office)  knew  nothing  about  that 
formidable  visitation  clause,  until  I  drew  their  attention 
toit."'i 

What  Bishop  Cotterill  thought  at  that  time  of  this  claim 
to  jurisdiction  has  been  sufficiently  shown  in  his  own  words. 
The  fact  that  he  took  different  ground  later  on  may  not  be 
to  his  credit ;  but  it  does  not  lessen  the  force  of  his  earlier 
reasoning.  To  this  reasoning  there  is  obviously  no  answer ; 
and  he  himself  never  ventured  to  make  any.  He  had  then 
declared  his  conviction  that 

"  in  the  matter  of  judgement  on  a  suffragan  Bishop,  the  letters 
patent  are  directly  opposed  to  the  principles  of  Church 
law." 

If  then,  the  Bishop  of  Natal  asks.  Bishop  Cotterill  could 
express  these  convictions,  although 

"  he  had  received  his  letters  patent  with  full  knowledge  of 
the  contents    of  Bishop   Gray's,"  "  what  right  has  Bishop 

^  See  p   338. 


1 


1 86s.      CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  CAPETOWN  TRIAL.      407 

Jones  to  charge  me — who  had  no  such  knowledge — with 
an  act  of  gross  immorahty  and  the  violation  of  a  solemn 
oath  ? " 

The  idea  of  a  consensual  jurisdiction  could  not  be  maintained 
in  this  case  for  a  moment.  The  Privy  Council,  in  Bishop 
Colenso's  words, 

"  took  their  stand  on  the  principle  that  a  public  functionary, 
appointed  by  Royal  letters  patent,  cannot  by  his  own 
private  act  so  modify  the  conditions  of  his  office  as  to 
subject  himself  to  deprivation  in  a  way  not  pointed  out  by 
the  law,  since  others  are  interested,  as  well  as  himself,  in 
holding  his  office  according  to  law,  and  not  allowing  the 
law  to  be  overridden  by  ecclesiastical  phrases  or  arguments, 
as  the  clergy  and  laity  of  the  Church  of  England  in  other 
parts  of  South  Africa,  but  especially  in  Natal,  are  interested 
in  the  maintenance  of  my  position  against  the  arbitrary 
action  of  Capetown." 

But  Bishop  Jones  insisted  that  he  had  a  further  moral  hold 
on  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 

"  Bishop  Colenso's  contention,"  he  says,  "  as  to  the  illegality 
of  which  he  would  have  been  guilty  had  he  obeyed  a  sent- 
ence which  the  Metropolitan  Court  (through  an  undue 
reliance  on  the  authority  bestowed  by  letters  patent)  had 
assumed  to  pass,  but  which  it  had  no  power  to  inforce,  is 
tantamount  to  his  saying  that  when  the  law  says  that  a 
sentence  has  no  legal  force,  it  forbids  a  man  to  obey  it ; 
that  even  what  is  binding  on  a  man's  conscience,  so  long  as 
a  court  of  law  refuses  to  allow  its  inforcement,  it  is  wrong 
and  illegal  to  do.  He  might  as  well  say  that  should  the 
law  refuse  to  support  a  father  in  requiring  obedience  from 
his  son,  it  would  be  illegal  for  the  son  to  keep  the  fifth 
commandment." 

"  I  have  shown,"  the  Bishop  of  Natal  replies,  "  that  it  was  not 
'  binding  on  my  conscience '  according  to  my  own  view  of 
my  duty,  confirmed  by  the  decision  of  the  Privy  Council — 


4o8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  viii. 

not  to  speak  of  Bishop  Cotterill's  opinion — to  appear  before 
the  illegal  court  of  the  Metropolitan,  or  obey  its  illegal  judge- 
ment, though  approved  by  Bishops  Cotterill  and  Twells. 
The  appeal  of  Bishop  Jones  to  the  fifth  commandment  is 
a  mere  fallacy,  since  he  tacitly  assumes  that  the  command 
in  question  was  one  which  the  son  was  '  bound  in  conscience ' 
to  obey,  whereas  a  son  would  be  perfectly  justified  in 
disobeying  a  father  who  commanded  him  to  do  what  was 
wrong,  either  morally  or  legally,  and  which  therefore  the 
father  had  no  right  to  command — e.g.  to  betray  a  trust 
confided  to  him  for  the  sake  of  others — nor  in  the  eyes  of 
sensible  men  would  he  appear  to  have  broken  the  fifth 
commandment  by  such  disobedience. 
"  But  Bishop  Jones  has  taken  no  notice  of  the  fact  that 
I  wrote  in  my  letter,  '  it  would  be  illegal  for  me  or  for  any 
otJicr  loyal  subject^  e.g.  Bishop  Jones  and  others,  to  recognise 
Bishop  Gray's  sentence  of  deprivation  as  having  any  force, 
which  has  been  pronounced  by  the  highest  authority  to  be 
null  and  void  in  law." 


I 


CHAPTER    IX. 

BISHOP   HAROLD    BROWNE   AND   THE   ANTAGONISTS   OF   THE 
BISHOP   OF   NATAL. 

The  publication  of  Bishop  Colenso's  criticisms  on  the 
Pentateuch  was  for  many  reasons  an  important  event, — 
important,  not  more,  it  may  be,  for  the  conclusions  reached 
by  the  inquiry  than  in  its  relation  to  the  religious  and  the 
general  thought  of  the  land.  The  way  in  which  these  criti- 
cisms were  received  by  that  which  is  commonly  spoken  of  as 
the  religious  world  was  still  more  remarkable.  The  object  of 
the  investigation  was  simply  the  discovery  and  the  establish- 
ment of  the  truth  ;  and  it  was  obvious  to  all  impartial  minds 
that  the  result  must  affect  the  value  put  upon  certain  books, 
either  by  adding  to  that  value  or  by  lessening  it.  The 
volumes  thus  submitted  to  examination  were  some  of 
the  sacred  books  of  Christendom  ;  and  the  sacred  books  of 
Christendom  were,  admittedly,  only  a  part  of  the  sacred  books 
of  the  world.  But  there  was  this  vast  difference  between 
them,  at  least  in  the  eyes  of  Christians  generally,  that  all 
those  other  books  were  wrong — wrong  in  history,  wrong  in 
philosophy,  wrong  in  the  statement  of  facts,  wrong  in  the 
conception  of  spiritual  realities.  In  all  these  respects  the 
Christian  books  were  right,  absolutely  right  ;  and  the  great 
task  of  Christendom  was  to  convince  the  world  of  the  error  of 
the  rest. 


4IO  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

This  work,  it  was  clear,  could  not  be  accomplished  without 
a  firm  conviction  on  the  part  of  the  assailants  that  their  own 
position  was  impregnable  ;  but  it  was  an  indispensable  condi- 
tion to  their  success  that  the  task  should  not  be  confined  to 
assertion.  If  it  should  be  so  confined,  nothing  could  be  looked 
for  but  an  infinite  series  of  wranglings.  The  mere  assurance 
of  Christians  would  be  met  by  equal  assurance  on  the  part  of 
the  adherents  of  Zoroaster,  of  Buddha,  or  of  Mahomet.  The 
worship  paid  by  the  Rabbinical  schools  to  the  letter  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  was  equalled,  if  not  surpassed,  by  the 
reverence  shown  by  the  Hindu  for  the  text  of  the  Rig  Veda. 
Each  had  his  sacred  history,  his  sacred  law,  his  sacred  psalms, 
hymns,  and  prayers  ;  nor  could  the  Christian  hope  to  sweep 
all  this  aside,  if  he  chose  to  challenge  them  on  the  authority 
of  other  sacred  books,  except  by  showing  that  these  books 
were  in  every  respect  superior  to  all  others.  If  they  really 
were  so,  they  could  be  submitted  fearlessly  to  the  most 
searching  scrutiny  ;  and  the  examination  could  be  carried  on 
without  excitement  and  without  passion,  the  results  being  left 
to  take  care  of  themselves.  To  say  that  the  value  of  the 
Christian  sacred  books  must  in  no  case  be  affected  would  be 
a  begging  of  the  whole  question.  In  the  general  opinion  of 
Christendom  all  the  series  of  sacred  books  were  wrong  but 
one.  It  was  at  least  conceivable  that  this  one  series  might  be 
found  to  be  no  exception.  It  was  further  conceivable  that 
the  progress  of  the  Divine  work  in  the  Church  and  in  the 
world  might  render  necessary  a  complete  change  in  the  esti- 
mate put  on  all  sacred  books  and  in  the  methods  to  be  applied 
to  them  ;  and  it  was,  at  least,  possible  that  the  idea  of  an 
external  infallible  authority  in  books  or  in  Churches  must 
give  way  to  something  higher  and  better. 

But  in  any  case,  if  the  veracity  or  accuracy  of  a  book 
should  be  assailed,  its  correctness  could  be  maintained  only 
by  showing  the  untenableness  of  the  specific  charge,  and  not 


J 


1865.        THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  411 

by  shifting  the  question  to  any  side  issue.  If  it  should  be 
said  that  the  genealogies  of  the  Book  of  Genesis  are  self- 
contradictory,  that  the  book  speaks  of  Methuselah  as  dying 
before  the  flood  and  after  it,  that  it  gives  an  impossible  chro- 
nology for  the  family  of  Abraham  and  of  Jacob,  these  charges 
could  only  be  met  by  showing  that  on  these  points,  and  not 
on  some  others,  there  was  no  mistake.  Either  let  this  be 
shown  in  every  instance,  or  let  the  admission  be  candidly 
made  that  the  Hebrew  or  other  Scriptures  had  been  regarded 
in  a  wrong  light,  and  made  to  answer  purposes  for  which  they 
had  never  been  designed.  There  had  seldom  been  a  question 
which  called  for  greater  clearness  of  thought  and  precision  of 
language  in  those  who  should  undertake  to  deal  with  it ;  but 
the  putting  of  the  question  evoked,  in  fact,  a  very  Saturnalia 
of  untruthfulness.  Writer  after  writer  committed  himself  at 
starting  to  conclusions  of  which  he  had  never  attempted  to 
foresee  the  consequences.  There  was  constant  shifting  of 
ground,  constant  shuffling,  equivocation,  and  evasion  ;  and 
these  disingenuous  methods  were  employed  by  many  who  had 
won,  and  won  deservedly,  a  high  reputation,  not  only  for  their 
learning,  but — in  a  far  higher  degree — for  the  integrity  of  their 
lives,  for  their  earnestness,  and  their  zeal.  They  had  done, 
and  they  continued  to  do,  good  work ;  and  it  might  be  thought 
that  there  is  no  justification  for  expressing  a  disparaging 
opinion  of  any  of  them  personally.  Judgement  must  be  left 
to  the  Divine  Judge  ;  but  we  are  bound  to  point  out  and  to 
denounce  methods  which  involve  the  least  disingenuousness, 
if  our  own  sense  of  truthfulness  is  not  to  be  tampered  with 
and  impaired. 

Before  he  published  the  First  Part  of  his  work  on  the 
Pentateuch,  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had  written  (without 
forwarding  it)  a  letter  to  Dr.  Harold  Browne,  then  Norrisian 
Professor  of  Divinity  at  Cambridge.  At  the  time  when 
he   thought   of  consulting   his    friend,   he    could    little   have 


412  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 


anticipated  the  mode  which  some  two  years  later  that  friend 
would  feel  himself  called  upon  to  adopt  in  answering  him. 
The  employment  of  this  mode  involved  a  great  wrong  to 
the  Bishop  of  Natal,  and  this  wrong  has  never  been  re- 
paired. In  mere  justice  to  him,  the  history  of  this  contro- 
versy must  be  given  ;  but  its  real  nature  cannot  be  shown 
except  by  reference  to  some  other  historical  controversies, 
somewhat  earlier  in  the  century,  w^hich  throw  a  full  light 
on  the  questions  raised  about  the  historical  value  of  the 
Pentateuch. 

We  must  suppose,  then,  that  a  writer  is  examining  the 
history  or  the  so-called  history  of  the  invasion  of  Greece  by 
Xerxes.  Taking  the  several  portions  of  the  narrative  in 
succession,  and  submitting  them  to  those  tests  to  which 
narratives  of  facts  in  our  daily  life  must  be  submitted,  he 
comes  clearly  and  definitely  to  the  conclusion  that  a  great, 
perhaps  even  the  greater,  part  of  the  story  is  not  to  be 
depended  upon  ;  that  the  accounts  given  of  the  causes  which 
led  to  the  war  are  clearly  fictitious  ;  that  the  whole  tale  of 
Demokedes  is  full  of  inconsistencies  and  contradictions  ;  that 
the  debates  which  are  said  to  have  preceded  the  march  of 
Xerxes  are  mere  fictions  ;  that  the  account  of  the  march  is 
highly  embellished,  and  that  the  whole  Hellenic  land  could 
not  have  supported  the  invading  army  for  a  week  ;  that  even 
the  most  notable  incidents  are  full  of  suspicious  circum- 
stances ;  that  not  a  detail  in  the  records  of  the  battles  of 
Marathon  or  Salamis,  or  even  Plataia,  can  be  relied  on  ;  that 
the  beautiful  history  of  Leonidas  contains  much  more  of 
fiction  than  of  fact.  We  must  suppose,  further,  that  this 
writer,  after  making  so  much  havoc  of  the  traditional  narra- 
tive, distinctly  avows  his  belief,  and  positively  maintains,  that 
Xerxes  did  invade  Europe  with  a  large  force,  that  he  made 
strenuous  efforts  to  inslave  a  free  people,  and  that  he  was 
beaten  back  ;  and,  further,  that  these  facts  were  of  the  utmost 


II 


1865.        THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  413 

importance  for  the  future  history  of  mankind  ;  that  the  victory 
of  the  Persians  would  have  retarded  for  hundreds,  if  not  for 
thousands,  of  years,  the  development  of  European  civilisation  ; 
that  the  victory  of  the  Greeks  attested  the  profound  sagacity 
of  Themistokles,  and  bore  fruit  in  the  freedom  and  splendour 
of  Periklean  Athens. 

It  is  obvious  that  anyone  who  proposed  to  answer  such  a 
writer  might  fairly  say,  if  he  so  thought,  that  he  was  absurdly 
incredulous,  and  that  he  had  made  an  extravagant  use  of  the 
pruning  knife.  His  only  duty  would  be  to  show  this,  as  well 
as  to  assert  it.  But  what  would  any  impartial  critics  say  if 
the  reply  took  the  following  form  } 

"  I  have  carefully  examined  the  writings  of  Herodotus,  and  in 
my  opinion  everything  tends  to  prove  that  his  history  must 
in  its  main  facts  be  true.  The  Persians  beyond  cjuestion 
marched  out  of  their  own  country,  passed  through  Asia 
Minor,  invaded  Western  Hellas,  and  were  beaten  back  by 
the  Athenians  and  their  allies.  The  latter  must  have  been 
in  a  far  higher  state  of  discipline,  and  influenced  by  far 
higher  motives  than  their  enemies,  or  such  a  victory  would 
have  been  impossible.  This  is  exactly  what  the  history  of 
Herodotus  says,  and  what  this  writer  denies." 

There  is  not,  it  may  safely  be  said,  a  man  with  a  particle 
of  honest  feeling,  who  would  not  at  once  answer  that  the 
critic  had  given  utterance  to  a  tissue  of  false  statements, 
which,  if  he  had  read  the  book  before  him,  he  must  have 
known  to  be  false,  and  the  uttering  of  which,  without  reading 
the  book,  aggravates  the  offence  ;  and  that  the  critic  was  bound 
to  make  an  unqualified  apology  not  only  to  the  writer  whom 
he  had  slandered,  but  to  the  public  whom  he  had  led  to  believe 
the  slander. 

But  here  the  terms  must  be  changed.  The  history  of  the 
Jewish  conquest  of  Canaan  in  many  remarkable  points  closely 


414  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

resembles  that  of  Herodotus.  Like  the  latter,  it  describes  an 
invasion,  and  exhibits  a  striking  picture  of  the  effects  of 
political  and  moral  foresight.  We  will  suppose  that  the 
narrative  of  this  Hebrew  conquest  has  been  very  patiently 
and  closely  analysed  by  a  writer  who  comes  to  the  conclusion 
that  very  much  of  the  tale  is  unhistorical ;  that  the  conferences 
with  Pharaoh  could  not  have  taken  place  as  they  are  related  ; 
that  the  numbers  throughout  are  exaggerated  ;  that  the  story 
of  the  invasion  of  Midian  is  as  contradictory  as  that  of  the 
attack  of  the  Persians  on  Delphi ;  that  the  elaborate  "  Mosaic  " 
legislation  is  as  much  the  composition  of  a  later  age  as  is  the 
legislation  of  Servius  Tullius  at  Rome  ;  that  the  long  speeches 
put  into  the  mouth  of  Moses  are  to  be  classed  with  the  long 
speeches  put  into  the  mouths  of  the  counsellors  of  Xerxes ; 
that  the  story  of  the  exploits  of  Joshua  is  deserving  of  about 
as  much  credit  as  the  story  of  the  exploits  of  Leonidas ;  and 
that  the  account  given  of  the  political  career  of  Moses  is  at 
least  as  inconsistent  as  the  account  given  of  the  political 
career  of  Themistokles.  But  this  writer,  while  thus  pulling  to 
pieces  the  traditional  narrative,  has,  we  will  suppose,  taken 
special  care  to  record  his  conviction  that  the  people  had 
sojourned  in  Egypt ;  that  they  did  pass  through  the  wilder- 
ness ;  that  they  invaded  Canaan  and  established  themselves 
in  the  conquered  territory  after  partially  subduing  the  inhabit- 
ants ;  and  that  these  facts  are  of  the  greatest  moment  in  the 
history  of  mankind,  as  opening  the  way  to  that  higher  faith 
and  deeper  conviction  of  the  Unity  and  Righteousness  of  God 
which  it  was  the  mission  of  the  teachers  of  the  Hebrew  people 
to  exhibit  to  the  world. 

It  is  clear  that  against  such  a  writer  also  an  opponent  might 
fairly,  (provided  that  he  alleged  the  proof  for  it),  bring  a 
charge  of  over-much  incredulity  or  over-minute  analysis,  or 
too  great  a  severity  in  applying  the  ordinary  tests  of  evidence 
to  a  narrative  of  events  >vhich  took  place  in  very  remote  ages. 


1865.        THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  415 


But  what  would  the  impression  be,  if  the  critic,  after  asserting 
that  he  had  with  the  greatest  care  examined  this  history  and 
read  his  opponent's  works,  were  to  say : — 

"  Everything  tends  to  prove  that  the  history  of  the  Pentateuch 
must  be  in  its  main  facts  true.  The  people  without  ques- 
tion came  out  of  Egypt,  sojourned  in  the  wilderness, 
conquered  Canaan,  and  must  have  been  both  numerous 
and  well-trained,  or  such  a  conquest  would  have  been 
impossible.  This  is  exactly  what  the  Pentateuch  says,  and 
what  [this  writer]  denies." 

The  verdict  of  every  honest  man  must  be  in  this  case 
precisely  that  which  it  would  be  in  the  case  which  I  have 
previously  supposed.  Is  the  offence  lessened  because  the 
writer  criticised  is  not  the  incredulous  Mr.  Grote,  or  the  more 
incredulous  Sir  Cornwall  Lewis,  but  a  clergyman  }  and  is  our 
honest  judgement  to  be  suppressed  because  the  critic  has  a 
high  repute  as  a  scholar  and  as  being  in  general  a  fair  and 
moderate  controversialist, — because,  in  short,  the  writer  criti- 
cised is  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  and  the  critic  is  Dr.  Harold 
Browne,  now  Bishop  of  Winchester } 

The  question  concerns  not  so  much  the  personal  character 
of  Bishop  Browne  as  the  strength  of  theological  prepossessions 
and  prejudices  ;  and  it  must  be  said  plainly  that,  if  one  who 
should  ascribe  to  Mr.  Grote  a  denial  of  the  fact  of  the  Persian 
invasion  would  owe  him  the  best  reparation  in  his  power, 
the  same  reparation  was  due  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal  for 
charging  him  with  a  denial  of  the  fact  of  the  Jewish  invasion 
and  of  its  success,  the  reality  of  which  he  distinctly  and 
positively  affirmed.  The  refusal  or  failure  to  make  this 
reparation  leaves  on  the  critic  the  responsibility  of  a  man 
who  should  accuse  Thierry  or  Lappenberg  of  denying  the 
fact  of  the  Norman  invasion  of  England.  In  the  interests, 
not  of   individuals,  but    of   the    nation,  the  matter    is    very 


4i6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

serious.  The  abuse  of  criticism  in  questions  which  affect  the 
traditional  or  popular  belief  has  become  so  gross,  it  appears 
so  completely  to  blind  the  eyes  and  pervert  the  nature  of 
men  who  in  other  things  show  themselves  upright  and 
generous,  that  it  can  no  longer  be  borne  with.  Is  our  faith 
in  the  honesty  and  truthfulness  of  Englishmen  to  be  shaken 
altogether  ?  Are  we  really  to  be  brought  not  to  the  hasty 
thought,  but  to  the  deliberate  and  fixed  belief,  that  the 
moment  they  think  their  shibboleths  (whether  religious  or 
political)  endangered,  all  men  become  liars  .-' 

To  the  demand  for  retractation  made  through  the  columns 
of  the  Examiner,  August  26,  1865,  Dr.  Browne,  then  Bishop 
of  Ely,  returned  the  following  answer : — 

"  Your  correspondent  and  Bishop  Colenso  charge  me  with 
wanton  misrepresentation,  when,  after  having  proved  that 
the  Israelites  had  dwelt  long  in  Egypt,  had  gone  out  of 
Egypt  in  large  multitudes,  had  sojourned  for  a  great 
length  of  time  in  the  Sinaitic  wilderness,  and  had  then 
poured  in  vast  hordes  upon  the  plains  of  Canaan  and  so 
conquered  the  country,  I  add,  '  This  is  exactly  what  the 
Pentateuch  says  and  what  Bishop  Colenso  denies.'  ^  Now 
really,  if  I  have  failed  at  all,  it  has  been  in  the  summing 
up  of  my  own  conclusions,  which  I  did  not  wish  to  press 
too  far;  and  so,  perhaps,  those  conclusions  do  not  seem 
so  very  much  beyond  Bishop  Colenso's  admissions  as  they 
would  have  done  if  more  clearly  and  forcibly  put.  This 
may  be  formally  and  in  the  letter  unfair  to  Bishop  Colenso  : 
but  it  is  not  so  in  spirit  and  reality.  .  .  .  My  object  in 
the  argument  referred  to  was  to  show  that  the  history  of 
the  Pentateuch  was  most  strongly  confirmed  by  indubit- 
able facts  in  those  very  points  on  which  Bishop  Colenso 
most  strongly  attacked  it ;  that  facts,  which  could  not  be 
gainsaid,  proved  a  long  residence  in  Egypt,  proved  a  long 
sojourn  in  the  wilderness,  proved  especially  that  the  num- 

1   T/ie  PentatciicJi  and  Elohistic  Psalms,  i  S64.  j 


1 86s.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  417 


bers  which  went  out  of  Egypt  and  dwelt  in  the  wilderness 
must  have  been  enormous,  and  that  the  conquest  of  Canaan 
could,  humanly  speaking,  only  have  been  effected  by  the 
invasion  of  masses  or  hordes  of  an  almost  countless  multi- 
tude. .  .  .  Such  being  the  real  conclusion  at  which  I 
arrived,  I  surely  do  Bishop  Colenso  no  wrong  if  I  say  that 
this  is  what  the  Pentateuch  says,  and  what  Bishop  Colenso 
has  written  on  purpose  to  disprove." 

A  comparison  of  these  words  with  the  sentences  previ- 
ously cited  (the  words  this  writer  only  being  substituted  for 
Bishop  Colenso)  displays  a  most  material  shifting  of  ground. 
How,  it  might  be  asked,  was  any  one  to  know  that,  when 
Bishop  Browne  said  that  "  the  people  came  out  of  Egypt,"  he 
meant  that  they  came  out  after  dwelling  there  "  a  long  time  "  ? 
When  he  said  that  "they  sojourned  in  the  wilderness,"  who 
v/as  to  know  that  here  also  "  a  long  time"  was  to  be  supplied  ? 
When  he  added  that  "  they  must  have  been  both  numerous 
and  well-trained,"  who  was  to  imagine  that  they  were  to 
be  numbered  by  thousands  of  myriads,  and  again  that  these 
well-trained  warriors  were  mere  masses  and  hordes  ?  To 
make  the  point  more  clear,  we  are  driven  back  to  the  records 
of  the  Persian  invasion  of  Europe,  To  his  supposed,  critic 
Mr.  Grote  might  reply  : — 

"  It  is  most  unfair,  it  is  most  false,  to  say  that  I  deny  the 
march  of  the  Persians  through  Western  Asia  and  their 
defeat  by  the  Athenians  and  their  allies.  You  cannot  say 
that  this  is  what  the  history  of  Herodotus  affirms  and  what 
I  deny,  because  I  do  not  deny  this  any  more  than  you 
deny  it  yourself" 

But  what  would  be  Mr.  Grote's  astonishment  if  his  critic 
were  to  reply  : — 

"  My  object  was   to   assert  that    facts   which  could    not  be 
questioned  proved  that  the  march  of  the  Persians  extended 
over  years,  that  thousands  of  ships  were  arrayed  against 
VOL.  I.  E  E 


41 8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

each  other  on  either  side,  and  more  especially  that  the 
number  of  the  invading  force  must  have  been  enormous — 
in  fact  an  almost  countless  multitude." 

But  how  would  it  be  if  the  historian  were  to  urge  further  : — - 

"  And  even  now  I  cannot  make  out  your  meaning,  or  what 
you  believe  or  do  not  believe  about  the  matter.  You  tell 
me  now  that  the  history  of  Herodotus  especially  proves 
the  enormous,  nay,,  the  countless,  numbers  of  the  Persians  ; 
but  a  little  while  ago  you  told  me  that  you  were  quite 
perplexed  and  could  not  tell  what  to  do  Avith  them,  and 
that  the  substitution  of  hundreds  for  myriads  would  remove 
most  of  the  difficulties,  while  yet  again  you  said  that  the 
smaller  number  would  be  just  as  puzzling  as  the  larger. 
What  am  I  to  infer  from  all  this  but  that  our  notions  of 
truthfulness  cannot  agree  together  ?  " 

Yet  this  was  precisely  the  position  in  which  the  Bishop  of 
Ely  placed  himself  by  his  letter  in  the  Examiner.  In  that 
letter  he  said  that  the  Pentateuch  "  proved  especially  the 
enormous,  almost  countless,  numbers  "  of  the  invading  Israel- 
ites ;  and  he  forced  on  his  readers  the  question  whether  he 
himself  really  believed  this, 

(i)  Because  he  had  said  in  his  volume  on  TJie  Pentatenck 
and  the  Eloliistic  Psalms, 

"  It  would  be  rash  to  den\-  that  the  numbers  of  the  Exodus 
are  inordinately  great,  and  proportionately  puzzling." 

He  added,  it  is  true,  that  the  story  is  professedly  miraculous, 
and  said  that  it  is  very  unreasonable, 

"  in  the  consideration,  to  keep  out  of  sight  miracle  altogether." 

But  in  his  letter  he  said  that 

"  the  conquest  of  Canaan  could,  humanly  speaking,  only 
have  been  effected  by  the  invasion  of  masses  or  hordes  ot 
an  almost  countless  multitude." 


I 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  419 

(2)  Because  in  his  book  he  had  asserted,  when  "  puzzled  " 
to  know  what  to  do  with  these  multitudes, 

"if  for  600  (thousand  men  fit  to  bear  arms)  we  might  read 
60,  all  would  be  clear ;  every  numerical  difficulty  worth 
thinking  of  would  vanish  at  once." 

In  other  words,  that  the  numbers  are  "  inordinately  great 
and  proportionately  puzzling,"  whereas  in  his  letter  he  said 
that  the  work  of  conquest  could  not  have  been  done  without 
almost  countless  numbers,  and  that,  therefore,  the  numbers 
are  not  exaggerated  at  all. 

(3)  Because  in  the  ver}'  same  page  of  his  book  in  which  he 
made  the  preceding  statement  he  said  : — 

"  Sixty  thousand  would,  perhaps,  be  as  much  too  small,  as 
six  hundred  thousand  seems  too  large,  a  number.  On  the 
whole,  notwithstanding  the  admitted  difficulty  of  the  large 
numbers,  it  is  very  questionable  whether  the  difficulties 
would  not  be  greater  on  the  supposition  that  the  numbers 
were  much  less  " — 

whereas  in  his  letter  he  urged  that 

"  the  insuperable  difficulty  would  lie  in  the  supposition  that 
the  numbers  fell  short  of  an  almost  countless  multitude," 

and  that,  therefore,  there  is  no  admitted  difficulty  in  the 
larger  number. 

It  is,  indeed,  pitiable  to  find  such  a  man  as  Bishop  Browne 
struggling  vainly  in  the  nets  of  inextricable  contradictions. 
He  wishes  to  uphold  the  credit  of  the  Pentateuch  ;  he  can  do 
so  only  by  saying  or  implying  that  its  statements  cannot  be 
trusted.  He  will  give  up  as  unhistorical  and  impossible 
the  alleged  fact  that  seventy  souls  could  in  four  generations 
[^row  into  six  hundred  thousand  armed  men.  The  difficulty, 
he  holds,  lies  in  the  paucity  of  generations,  there  being  four 

E  E  2 


420  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

only  from  Levi  to  Moses.     The  generations  in  the  family  of 
Levi  were,  he  thinks,  "  abnormally  few,"  and  he  insists  that 

"  eight  or  nine  is  the  more  probable  number  for  the  generality 
of  the  descendants  of  Jacob." 

But  even  if  we  grant  that  there  were  eight  or  nine,  or  that 
there  were  ten,  this  would  not  expand  a  troop  of  seventy 
persons  into  a  nation  of  more  than  two  millions.  The  positive 
promise  is,  however,  given  in  Genesis  xv.  i6,  that  "in  the 
fourth  generation  they  "  (the  Israelites  generally)  "  shall  come 
hither  again  "  ;  and  this  solemn  declaration  Bishop  Browne 
summarily  sets  aside.     But,  as  the  Bishop  of  Natal  remarks,^ 

"the  'abnormally  few'  generations  are  not  confined  to  the 
family  of  Moses  and  Aaron.  They  occur  in  every  instance 
which  is  recorded  in  the  Pentateuch  or,  with  one  exception, 
anywhere  else  in  the  Bible." 

The  exception  is  the  genealogy  of  Joshua,  as  given  by  the 
chronicler  in  a  book  full  of  errors,  written  two  centuries  after 
the  captivity,  and  a  thousand  years  after  the  commonly  re- 
ceived date  of  the  Exodus.  Bishop  Browne's  rejection  of 
these  alleged  facts  is  a  plain  admission  that  the  "  Scriptural 
account,  as  it  stands,  is  incredible." 

Nor  is  this  the  only  straw  at  which  he  catches.  He  clings 
to  Abraham's  retinue  of  three  hundred  and  eighteen  followers, 
and  holds  that  the  family  of  Jacob  must  in  their  descent  to 
Egypt  have  been  accompanied  by  a  corresponding  number  of 
shepherds  and  herdsmen.  But  of  this  the  narrative  of  Genesis 
gives  not  the  slightest  indication,  and  Jacob  himself,  on  his 
return  from  Padan-Aram,  says,  "  I  am  few  in  numbers."  But 
if  he  had  this  retinue,  why  did  he  send  his  darling  Joseph 
alone  to  look  for  his  brethren  t  How  is  it  that  the  ten  sons 
went  unaccompanied  to  buy  food  from  Egypt .''     The  whole 

^  Pe}itateuch,  Part  \'.  p.  xiv. 


1 865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  421 

story  shows  that  they  had  no  attendants,  and  how  would  their 
ten  ass-loads  of  corn  have  suppHed  food  for  these  hundreds  of 
shepherds  and  herdsmen  for  a  whole  year,  as  well  as  for  their 
own  family  of  seventy  persons  ?  ^  But  he  has  yet  another 
resource  remaining.  The  numbers  as  they  now  appear  are 
large.  The  difficulties  are  not  removed  by  striking  off  a 
cipher  and  reducing  six  hundred  thousand  warriors  to  sixty 
thousand  ;  but  the  text  of  Moses  may  have  been  affected  by 
the  carelessness  or  blundering  of  copyists.  It  may  have  gone 
through  some  such  changes  as  happened  to  the  poems  of 
Homer,  collected  by  one  and  re-edited  by  another,  and  the 
"  slight  corruptions  "  so  introduced  "  might  have  affected  most 
probably  and  easily  the  numbers  in  the  Pentateuch."  This 
is,  indeed  opening  the  flood-gates  of  speculation.  The  so- 
called  Homeric  poems  are  an  accretion  of  songs  or  lays  which 
grew  up  through  a  long  series  of  years,  and  the  story  con- 
tained in  them  is  inconsistent  or  impossible  from  beginning 
to  end.  But  here  again  Bishop  Browne  cannot  escape  from 
the  morass.  He  shows  that  he  is  very  well  aware  that  the 
numbers  in  Exodus  are  not  corrupted. 

^'  I  must  freely  confess,"  he  says,  "  this  solution  of  the  problem 
'  by  the  reduction  of  the  numbers '  is  not  so  simple  or  satis- 
factory as  it  sounds  at  first.  The  number  600,000  does  not 
stand  alone.  In  the  first  two  chapters  of  Numbers  we  have 
all  the  constituents  of  that  number.  Twice  over  the  number 
of  fighting  men  in  each  tribe  is  mentioned,  and  the  second 
time  they  are  arranged  in  four  camps  ....  the  number  in 
each  camp  is  given,  and  in  both  cases  the  sum  is  603,550 
fighting  men  above  twenty  years  of  age.  All  the  way  through 
the  history  the  numbers,  more  or  less,  correspond,  by  what 
is  not  the  simple  recurrence  of  the  figure,  which  might  have 
suffered  equally  in  every  place  from  error  of  transcription." 

So  far  then  as  the  numbers  are  concerned,  we  know  that  the 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  \\  p.  xv. 


422  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

text  is  not  corrupt,  that  they  are  checked,  and  counter-checked 
in  so  many  cases  that  there  is  no  pretence  for  any  such 
hypothesis. 

What  right  then  had  Bishop  Browne  to  talk  of  corruptions 
such  as  these  in  the  text,  and  then  to  speak  of  these  corrup- 
tions as  "  shght,"  when  in  truth  they  would  be  of  the  most 
serious  kind  ?     What  right  had  he  to  assert  that 

"  without  miraculous  intervention  the  numbers  in  the  writings 
of  Moses  were  a  thousand-fold  more  liable  to  have  become 
corrupted  than  those  in  the  writings  of  the  great  Greek 
historians  "  ? 

What  right  had  he  to  assert  this,  when  he  had  himself 
already  given  the  strongest  possible  reasons  for  saying  that 
they  were  not  corrupt,  and  when  he  must,  or  ought  to,  have 
known  that  the  numbers  in  the  Greek  historians  have  also  not 
been  corrupted  ?  He  is  speaking  of  corruptions  caused  by 
the  fault  of  transcribers,  and  in  this  sense  the  numbers  in 
Herodotus,  for  instance,  arc  not  corrupt.  They  are  impossible 
numbers,  it  is  true,  but  they  are  the  numbers  which  Herodotus 
himself  wrote  down.  These  also  have  been  checked  and 
counter-checked,  and  the  sums  total  correspond.  Critics  may 
have  rejected  both  these  totals  and  their  constituents  ;  but  no 
one  supposes  that  they  have  been  falsified  since  first  Herodotus 
set  them  down.  Bishop  Browne  further  takes  comfort  from 
the  thought 

"  that  much  greater  difficulties  than  inaccui'acy  in  numerals 
would  not  invalidate  the  general  truth  of  the  Persian 
history  of  Herodotus  or  the  Athenian  history  of  Thucydides, 
or  the  retreat  of  the  10,000  related  by  Xenophon." 

But  the  numerals  in  these  histories  are  not  inaccurate,  in  the 
sense  that  they  have  been  tampered  with  by  later  transcribers. 
Wrong  they  may  be  ;  but  if  the}^  are,  they  were  so  written  by 


1S65.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  0.  423 

Thucydides  or  Herodotus  or  Xenophon.     The  cases  moreover, 
as  the  Bishop  of  Natal  remarks,  are  not  parallel. 

"  What  credit,"  he  asks,  "  should  we  give  to  the  details  of 
Xenophon's  narrative  if,  starting  with  10,000,  he  had  gone  on 
to  describe  his  doings  as  those  of  a  general  of  a  million  of 
men,  sending  50,000  here  and  there,  losing  tens  of  thousands 
by  plagues  ,and  other  accidents,  and  besides  all  this 
deliberately  and  systematically  falsifying  the  numbers  of 
his  troops  throughout,  even  when  professing  to  give  the 
exact  results  of  the  different  marshallings,  which  he  himself 
had  superintended  ? " 

But  Bishop  Browne  was  well  aware  also  that  difficulties 
even  more  formidable  than  any  connected  with  the  numbers 
of  the  Israelites  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus  were  involved  in 
the  characteristics  of  the  Elohistic  and  Jehovistic  portions  of 
the  Pentateuch.  The  Bishop  of  Natal  brought  out  the  evidence 
of  actual  facts  as  furnished  by  the  narratives  :  the  Bishop  of 
Ely  sought  only  to  give  some  "  probable  "  explanation  of  these 
narratives.  His  first  hypothesis  was  that  Moses  would  write 
first  only  a  very  brief  sketch  of  the  previous  history  from  the 
Creation  onwards,  reserving  a  fuller  account  for  the  closing 
years  of  his  life.  If  so,  he  would  be  likely  in  the  earlier  tale 
to  use  the  word  Elohim,  and  would  defer  the  constant  use  of 
Jehovah  till  his  people  had  become  more  thoroughly  familiar 
with  it.  In  the  more  recent  portions  of  his  books,  the  por- 
tions interpolated  in  the  older  parts  and  the  portions  added 
at  the  end  of  them,  he  would  introduce  the  more  sacred  and 
now  long  known  name  of  the  Almighty. 

Bishop  Colcnso  remarks  here  that  Bishop  Browne  has  over- 
looked a  point  fatal  to  his  theory — viz.  that  certain  sections  in 
which  the  name  Elohim  is  used  exclusively,  are  almost  identical 
in  style  with  the  Jehovistic,  yet  are  entircl}'  distinct  from  the  old 
Elohistic  narrative,  which  forms  the  basis  of  the  Pentateuch.^ 

^    O71  the  Pefita/ciich,  Part  V.  p.  xxvi. 


424  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

The  Bishop  of  Ely's  second  hypothesis  is  that,  writing  at 
two  different  periods  of  his  Hfe,  Moses  would  naturally  use 
different  sets  of  documents.  For  the  earlier  portions  he  would 
use  the  ancient  records  ;  and  these  would 

"  pretty  certainly  have  been  Elohistic,  for  otherwise  the  people 
could  not  have  been  ignorant  or  forgetful  of  the  great  name 
of  their  Creator.  The  portions  written  and  mingled  in  with 
the  traditional  portions  by  Moses  would  on  the  other  hand 
most  probably  be  Jehovistic." 

Of  these  two  hypotheses  he  says  : — 

"  These  explanations  are  surely  possible  solutions  of  the 
difficulty  which  Bishop  Colenso  declares  to  be  insuperable. 
I  firmly  believe  that  one  of  these  solutions  is  indeed 
true."  1 

It  is  a  happy  thing  that  we  have  only  two  hypotheses  ; 
Bishop  Browne  might  have  found  a  dozen,  and  then  expressed 
his  conviction  that  one  of  them  was  the  true  one.  But  he 
would  be  bound  to  say  which  of  the  dozen  was  the  right  inter- 
pretation :  it  is  not  easy  to  see  why  or  how  this  duty  is 
changed  because  he  confines  himself  to  two.  But  he  has,  as 
in  the  former  case,  overlooked  a  point  which  upsets  his  hypo- 
thesis. The  account  of  the  revelation  of  the  Divine  name  to 
Moses  in  Exodus  vi.,  which  must  have  been  written  by  Moses 
himself,  if  any  part  of  the  history  was  so  written,  is  due 
undoubtedly  to  the  very  same  hand  which  wrote  the  old 
Elohistic  narrative."  It  is  useless  to  speak  of  the  name 
Jehovah  as  having  been  known  and  then  forgotten.  The 
Elohistic  writer  abstains  throughout  his  narrative  from  using 
the  name  Jehovah  at  all,  jintil  he  has  recorded  its  revelation 
to  Moses,  and  it  follows  therefore  inevitably  that  he  meant 
the  statement 

^  Bishop  of  Natal,  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  xxi. 
-  lb.  p.  xxviii. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  425 

"  I  appeared  unto  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob  by  El-Shaddai, 
but  by  my  name  Jehovah  was  I  not  known  to  them," 

to  be  understood  as  saying  that  the  name  was  actually  not 
known  at  all  to  the  Patriarchs.^ 

What  the  Bishop  of  Ely  may  have  meant  by  his  reference 
to  miracle  is  not  clear.  Could  his  reasoning  be  that  numbers 
\vhich  are  utterly  perplexing  on  any  human  supposition  may 
in  some  way  or  other  be  received  on  the  ground  that  the 
narrative  is  professedly  full  of  miracles,  just  as  the  enormous 
numbers  of  the  army  of  Xerxes,  utterly  inexplicable  by  any 
reference  to  the  supplies  of  any  human  commissariat,  may  be 
received  in  a  narrative  in  which,  as  is  the  case  in  that  of 
Herodotus,  superhuman  agency  is  manifest  throughout  "^  This 
is  an  opinion  which  might  perhaps  be  legitimately  expressed 
by  one  who  will  adhere  to  it  ;  but  in  his  letter  the  Bishop  of 
Ely  shifted  his  ground  by  saying  that  the  conquest  of  Canaan 
could,  humanly  speaking,  have  been  effected  only  by  an  almost 
countless  multitude. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Dr.  Browne  had,  in  his  letter,  charged 
Bishop  Colenso  with  reckless  and  irreverent  treatment  of 
records 

"  thrown  into  the  sacred,  solemn   form   of  the  Pentateuchal 
narrative,  a  form   in  which  they  have  for  three  thousand  / 
years  been  accepted  as  a  true  and  heaven-inspired  history  ; " 

but  it  can  scarcely  be  denied  that  he  has  himself  laid 
violent  hands  on  at  least  one  cardinal  statement  which  in  the 
Book  of  Deuteronomy  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  Moses.  On 
the  supposition  of  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  this  narrative,  the 
intimate  familiarity  shown  with  minute  local  features  in  the 
land  of  Canaan  had  to  be  accounted  for.  According  to  Dr. 
Browne,  this  familiarity  was  attained  by  Moses  during  the  many 
journeys  of  exploration  which  he  made  through  Palestine 
^  Bishop  of  Natal,  Pentateuc/i,  Part  V.  p.  xxix. 


426  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

before  the  final  entrance  of  the  Israelites ;  but  except  on 
the  hypothesis  that  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  is  historically 
untrustworthy,  this  point  is  not  left  an  open  one.  The  words 
ascribed  to  Moses  not  merely  imply,  but  state  with  the 
utmost  possible  clearness,  that  he  had  never  visited  or  seen 
the  Promised  Land.  The  very  pathos  of  his  pleading  lies  in 
this  fact,  that  his  eyes  have  never  rested  on  its  hills  and 
streams.  "  I  pray  thee  let  me  go  over  and  see  the  good  land 
that  is  beyond  Jordan."  But  the  prayer  was  not  to  be 
granted.  From  the  top  of  Pisgah  he  might  indeed  gaze  on 
its  faint  and  distant  outlines,  but  nearer  he  might  not 
approach.  "  I  must  die  in  this  land  :  I  must  not  go  over 
Jordan."  What  meaning,  or  rather  what  truth,  is  left  in 
these  words,  if  they  were  spoken  b\-  one  who  had  many  a 
time  crossed  the  stream,  and  made  himself  familiar  with  the 
future  inheritance  of  his  followers  .'' 

These  are  matters  which  cannot  be  treated  as  questions 
of  mere  detail.  The  supposition  last  mentioned  strikes 
directly  at  the  truthfulness  of  the  Hebrew  lawgiver.  The 
Bishop  of  Ely's  charges,  as  put  forth  in  his  volume  on  the 
Pentateuch,  are  amply  refuted  by  those  passages  in  which 
Bishop  Colenso  distinctly  maintained  that 

"  the  Israelites  did  leave  Egypt,  and  remained  for  a  time  in 
the  wilderness  of  Sinai,  under  circumstances  which  pro- 
duced a  profound  impression  on  the  national  mind," 

and  in  which  he  further  affirmed  that 

"  there  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to  believe  ....  that  there 
w^as  no  residence  of  the  Israelites  in  Egypt,  no  deliverance 
out  of  it." 

They  could  be  established  at  all  only  by  shifting  ground  ; 
and  Bishop  Browne  shifted  his  ground  accordingly.  But  in 
doincr  so  he  took  no  notice  of  the  two  histories  to  which  his 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.         427 

attention  had  been  specially  called.  The  systematic  Mosaic, 
legislation,  and  the  elaborate  minuteness  of  the  Levitical 
organization,  had  been  regarded  as  conclusively  proving  the 
accuracy  and  authority  of  the  Mosaic  narrative.  But  of  this 
network  of  laws,  and  this  intricate  priestly  system,  the 
national  history  down  to  the  time  of  the  Captivity  exhibits 
not  a  trace.  How  could  the  inference  be  avoided  that  both 
the  system  and  the  code  belong  to  a  period  subsequent  to 
the  Captivity  ?  And  how  could  the  student,  examining  the 
records  of  this  legislation,  forget  that  the  early  history  of 
Rome  furnished  the  closest  parallel  to  that  of  the  Jews .'' 
Here  also  we  have  a  legislation  (the  Servian)  drawn  out  with 
the  precision  of  an  English  Act  of  Parliament,  a  legislation 
affecting  directly  the  whole  body  of  the  people  ;  and  with  it 
we  have  a  subsequent  traditional  history  which  ignores  it. 
Hence,  after  the  closest  examination.  Sir  Cornewall  Lewis 
concludes  that  whatever  the  Servian  legislation  may  have 
been,  we  have  of  its  details  no  knowledge  whatever,  or  rather 
we  have  ample  evidence  that  in  its  main  provisions  no 
attempt  was  ever  made  to  carry  out  that  legislation.  Why 
may  not  that  which  took  place  in  Italy  have  taken  place 
also  in  Canaan  .'' 

But,  if  Bishop  Browne  might  legitimately  strive  to  uphold  the 
historical  value  of  the  Pentateuch  so  far  as  it  could  honestly 
be  upheld,  it  was  unworthy  of  him  to  insinuate  that  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  admitted  even  less  than  he  professed  to  maintain. 
The  Bishop  had  spoken  of  some  of  the  Pentateuchal  narrative 
as  derived  "  from  legendary  recollections  of  some  former 
residence  in  Egypt  under  painful  circumstances,  and  of  some 
great  deliverance,"  and  Dr.  Browne,  fastening  on  the  phrase, 
ascribed  to  him  not  quite  accurately  a  constant  use  of  the 
word,  which  he  pronounced  to  be  in  itself  "  somewhat 
suspicious."  Legend,  he  remarked,  became  so  soon  almost 
identified  with  fable 


428  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 


"  that  one  chief  sense  attached  to  it  by  Johnson  is  '  an 
incredible  unauthentic  narrative  ; ' "  and  he  added,  "  I 
cannot  think  that  the  Bishop  would  have  used  the  word 
so  frequently  without  intending  to  throw  some  discredit 
even  on  that  traditional  basis  which  he  does  not  wholly 
deny." 

The  constant  use  of  the  word  imputed  to  Bishop  Colenso 
cannot  be  proved  ;  and  of  the  traditional  basis  it  is  enough  to 
say  that  he  not  only  does  not  deny,  but  positively  maintains 
it.  But  the  word  was  used  in  a  few  cases  simply  to  denote  the 
transmission  of  this  basis,  through  a  series  of  generations,  by 
oral  traditions.  It  would  have  been  more  accurate,  probably, 
to  speak  always  of  "  stories  orally  transmitted "  instead  of 
"  legendary  stories  "  ;  but  the  former  phrase  is  more  cumber- 
some and  awkward,  and  the  latter  implies  no  greater  disbelief 
of  the  narrative  than  the  other.  If  the  historian  of  Greece 
speaks  of  the  narrative  of  Herodotus  as  legendary,  he  asserts 
no  more  than  that  it  was  transmitted  by  oral  tradition  only, 
until  Herodotus  committed  it  to  writing. 

Whatever,  then,  may  have  been  the  motives  and  the  purpose 
of  the  Bishop  of  Ely,  his  criticism  of  Bishop  Colenso  was  not 
fair,  not  just,  not  true.  It  was  criticism  which  must  cause 
gratuitous  pain  ;  but  in  this  respect  another  of  the  Bishop's 
friends  was  a  worse  offender.  Not  much,  perhaps,  may  be 
gained  by  attempting  to  trace  the  workings  of  a  mind  like  that 
of  Mr.  Maurice  ;  but  the  supreme  unselfishness  and  beauty  of 
his  character  give  his  words  a  weight  which  makes  it  the  more 
needful  to  point  out  the  fallacies  running  through  them  or 
underlying  them.  The  thought  that  charges  of  historical 
inaccuracy  can  be  disproved  only  by  proving  the  correctness 
of  the  history  seems  never  to  have  entered  his  mind.  Although 
for  quite  other  reasons  than  those  which  influenced  the 
traditionalists  of  the  day,  yet  with  not  less  vehemence  than 
theirs,  Mr.  Maurice  took  upon  himself  the  office  of  the  judge 


1S65.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  429 

and  the  doomster.     None,  he  said,  could  be  more  indignant 
with  the  Bishop  of  Natal  than  he  was  himself. 

"  He  seemed  to  be  taking  from  us  the  very  message  which 
we  had  been  suppressing  and  mutilating  ;  to  be  indorsing 
the  crime  which  we  had  been  committing  against  the  laity  ; 
to  be  using  physical  facts  for  the  sake  of  cheating  us  of 
moral  and  political  facts  ;  to  be  destroying  the  great  link 
between  God  and  national  life  ;  to  be  driving  us  to  the  old 
platitudes  and  abstractions  about  the  necessity  of  order  to 
freedom,  and  freedom  to  order,  which  have  no  power  over 
any  human  spirit,  when  we  might,  if  we  believe  the  Exodus, 
speak  of  an  everlasting  God  of  Freedom,  who  is  also,  and 
for  that  reason,  the  God  of  Order."  ^ 

What,  it  might  be  asked,  is  all  this  talk  about  ?  What  did 
Mr.  Maurice  mean  by  physical  facts,  and  by  the  application 
of  them  to  overthrow  spiritual  truths  ?  What  did  he  mean 
by  saying  that  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had  struck  out  sparks  and 
invented  theories,-  and  that  the  answers  to  him,  so  far  as  they 
have  not  consisted  of  shrieks  and  ridicule,  have  been  directed 
to  an  exposure  of  his  physical  facts  .^  ^  Any  one  who  had  not 
opened  the  Bishop's  work  on  the  Pentateuch  might  be  led  by 
these  words  to  suppose  that  it  broached  some  new  geo- 
graphical or  astronomical  ideas  which  upset  the  Mosaic 
cosmogony,  or  that  it  urged  the  evidence  furnished  by  the 
science  of  language  or  of  comparative  mythology  against  the 
Mosaic  accounts  of  the  fall  of  man.  He  could  not  possibly 
learn  from  Mr.  Maurice's  pages  that  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had 
pronounced  the  narrative  of  the  Pentateuch  to  be  not  histori- 
cal, because  it  exhibited  palpable  contradictions  ;  because  its 
chronology  was  artificial  ;  because  it  embodied  a  legislation 
which,  as  we  see  on  the  face  of  it,  was  never  carried  out,  and 
exhibits  a  state   of  society   which    never   existed  ;   because, 

1  Claims  of  the  Bible  and  of  Science,  p.  76. 

2  lb.  p.  125.  3  lb.  p.  73. 


430  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

finally,  it  would  be  impossible  to  account  for  the  later  history 
of  the  people,  if  the  Mosaic  history  was  a  genuine  relation  of 
events  which  passed  before  the  occupation  of  Canaan.  To 
physical  facts  there  are  only  indirect  and  incidental  references  : 
and  all  that  Mr.  Maurice  could  do  by  such  remarks  was  to  place 
the  question  on  a  false  issue.  The  truth  is  that  no  one  was 
more  profoundly  conscious  than  Mr.  Maurice  that  spiritual 
things  must  be  spiritually  discerned  ;  but  he  remained  not 
less  assured  that  it  was  indispensably  necessary  for  all  others 
to  discern  the  truth  where  he  saw  it  himself,  and  that,  if  they 
failed  to  see  it  where  he  saw  it,  they  would  not  find  it  at  all. 
His  own  conviction  of  the  Divine  righteousness  was  a  rock 
not  to  be  shaken  ;  but  it  also  drove  him  to  make  a  crowd  of 
assumptions  about  the  records  in  which  he  traced  the  several 
steps  in  the  Divine  government  of  the  world.  From  the  Book 
of  Genesis  he  learnt  the  sacredness  of  the  order  of  the  family, 
the  misery  which  comes  with  the  infraction  of  it,  the  blessings 
which  flow  from  obedience  to  it.  The  Book  of  Exodus  taught 
him  that  God  had  sympathy  with  sufferers,  that  He  was  the 
Judge  of  the  tyrant,  the  Deliverer  of  the  bondman  and  the 
captive  ;  and  from  these  convictions  he  drew  the  inference 
that  the  books  were,  throughout,  trustworthy  historical  narra- 
tives. At  the  same  time  his  respect  for  the  letter  of  the 
narrative  was  not  so  unswerving  as  to  satisfy  the  adherents 
of  straiter  schools.  Thus,  for  instance,  he  resolved  the  inci- 
dents of  Balaam's  journey  into  a  spiritual  impression  left  on 
the  mind  of  the  seer  '^  in  the  teeth  of  the  comment  in  the  New 
Testament  that  the  dumb  ass  spoke  with  the  articulate  speech 
of  man.  But  when  the  same  freedom  with  regard  to  this 
same  narrative  was  used  by  another  who  went  on  to  the 
further  question  of  the  time  of  its  composition,  and  who 
reached  the  conclusion  arrived  at  more  recently  by  the  most 

^  Sermons  on  the  Old  Testament,  Sermon  I.  p.  28. 


1 865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  431 

eminent  of  modern  Jewish  interpreters,^  Mr.  Maurice  expressed 

his  aversion  not  of  a  critical  method  which  was  too  lax  or 
too  arbitrary,  but  of  the  spiritual  perversity  which  was  robbing 
men  of  lessons  indispensable  for  the  vindication  of  the  Divine 
righteousness.  It  mattered  not  that  Dr.  Stanley  spoke  of  the 
national  religion  of  the  Jews,  down  even  to  the  Babylonish 
captivity,  as  a  sensual  and  bloody  idolatry.  It  was  enough 
for  Mr.  Maurice  that  the  Book  of  Genesis  inforced  in  his 
opinion  certain  spiritual  truths,  and  he  insisted  with  an  amaz- 
ing pertinacity  that  apart  from  this  book  the  knowledge  of 
those  truths  could  not  have  been  attained.  The  lessons  which 
it  taught  were  or  had  been  needed  by  Englishmen.  Like  the 
Israelites  in  Egypt,  they  had  been  sorely  oppressed  by  the 
ecclesiastical  yoke  before  the  Reformation,  and  deception  had 
gone  hand  in  hand  with  t}Tanny.  With  astonishing  simplicity 
he  failed  to  see  the  irrelevance  of  the  tirade  called  forth  by 
the  thought  of  that  time  of  bondage. 

"  If  there  was  a  Lord  God  who  had  proclaimed  His  commands 
out  of  heaven  amidst  thunders  and  lightnings  ;  if  He  was 
really  what  He  said  that  He  was,  a  Lord  God  who  brought 
His  people  out  of  bondage,  ....  then  Englishmen  might 
hold  up  their  heads  against  their  foes  and  rise  up,  were  they 
ever  so  sunken,  in  the  might  of  Him  Avho  had  promised  not 
to  forsake  them  or  forget  them."  - 

Such  comments,  it  is  clear,  might  be  drawn  out  to  any 
extent,  and  Mr.  Maurice  had  at  his  command  wealth  of  illus- 
trations'which  proved  that  the  lessons  taught  by  the  Book  of 
Exodus  were  living  lessons. 

"They  raised  the  English  middle  classes  into  moral  and 
political  existence  ;  they  ratified  the  great  oath  of  the 
peasants  at  Riitli  ;  they  raised  the  Dominican  Savonarola 
to  be  the  witness  against  Alexander  the  Sixth  ;  they  made 

'  Dr.  Kalisch.  ^  Claims  of  the  Bible  and  of  Scic7iLC,'^.  "jo. 


432  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  ix 

the  German  monk  mightier  than  Charles  the  Fifth  ;  their 
echoes  woke  again  among  the  peasants  of  the  Tyrol ;  they 
stirred  the  scholars  of  Germany  to  a  new  life  ;  they  roused 
the  Czar  of  the  Russias  to  drive  back  the  invader  who  had 
profaned  the  holy  shrine  of  Moscow."  ^ 

If  it  was  the  Book  of  Exodus,  and  this  book  only,  which 
taught  all  these  men  their  lessons,  there  ought  surel}'  to  be 
some  record  of  the  fact.  The  force  of  the  lessons  is  not  dis- 
puted, but  the  fact  that  the  peasants  of  Riitli  had  any  intimate 
familiarity  with  the  narratives  of  that  book,  or  that  some  or 
many  of  them  had  any  knowledge  of  it  at  all,  is  one  rather  to 
be  proved  than  assumed  ;  and  it  is  not  easy  to  see  why  Arnold 
of  Brescia  and  Savonarola  could  only  have  been  roused  to 
their  condemnation  of  sacerdotal  corruption  by  the  story  of 
the  Exodus.  It  is  nothing  less  than  absurd  to  assert  that  with- 
out this  story  the  clergy  would  no  longer  be  able  to  say  to 
the  laity  : — 

"  The  God  who  rules  over  you  is  verily  such  an  One  as  this 
book,  taken  in  its  simplest  sense,  says  that  He  is.  We 
proclaim  to  you  that  God  is  the  Deliverer  of  nations.  He 
did  not  pretend  that  He  delivered  them  ;  He  actually 
delivered  them."  ^ 

But  such  deliverance  does  not  come  always.  It  did  not 
come  to  Harold  and  his  brave  Englishmen  who  fought  under 
him  at  Senlac  ;  and  there  has  surely  been  no  invasion  marked 
by  more  monstrous  wrong  than  that  of  the  Norman  Con- 
queror. Mr.  Maurice's  teaching  may  seem  to  be  edifying, 
but  it  is  really  dangerous.  It  is  dangerous  because  it  stakes 
our  faith  on  a  wrong  issue,  and  because  our  inference  may  be 
used  to  support  the  authority  of  other  sacred  books  besides 
our  own.  We  may,  with  Mr.  Maurice,  hold  up  the  Pentateuch, 
and  ask  whether  the  events  related  in  it  are  not  all  "disco\^e- 

^  ClaiDis  of  the  Bible  and  of  Science,  p.  71.  -  lb.  p.  72. 


1865.         777.^  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  433 

ries  to  us  of  a  Divine  Lord,  speaking  to  man,  and  of  man." 
If  we  reply  that  this  is  so,  our  answer  does  not  prove  the 
historical  accuracy  of  the  Pentateuch  except  by  involving  the 
historical  truth  of  the  Koran.     When  we  ask — 

"  Has  not  this  story  of  the  Red  Sea  given  faith  to  men  in 
sore  trials,  when  they  needed  something  else  than  fictions 
to  rest  upon  }  "  ^ 

many  a  professor  of  Islam  might  retort — 

"  Has  not  the  history  of  our  Prophet  nerved  our  arm  for 
conquest,  and  supported  us  in  times  of  defeat  and  shame  .-' 
Have  not  our  heroes  received  fresh  strength  in  the  convic- 
tion that  there  is  no  God  but  God,  and  Mahomet  is  the 
Prophet  of  God  .? " 

When  we  say  that  the  books  of  the  Pentateuch  educate  us, 
as  no  other  books  can,  out  of  the  temper  of  mind  which  makes 
us  think  of  God  as  a  very  great  Being  who  does  not  care 
about  little  things,  when  we  assert  that 

"  they   compel    me    to    believe    that    God   does  care  for  the 
sanitary   condition,  for  the   bodily   circumstances,    of  the 
,     people  of  my  land,  and  of  every  other  land,"  ^ 

we  use  words  which  might  come  as  earnestly  from  the  lips  of 
a  Mahometan  as  from  our  own.  The  lesson  is  in  either  case 
true  and  good,  but  it  does  not  prove  the  historical  truth 
whether  of  the  Koran  or  of  the  Old  Testament. 

Mr.  Maurice's  canon  would  carry  us  even  further  than  the 
Koran.  It  would  prove  the  historical  truth  of  the  Iliad  and 
the  Odyssey.  The  Greek  could  not  afford  to  dispense  with 
the  lessons  taught  by  the  friendship  of  Achilleus  for  Patroklos, 
or  the  still  higher  lessons  of  self-sacrifice,  of  filial  and  brotherly 
love,  displayed  in  the  person  and  the  career  of  Hektor.  Nay 
more,   these   epic    poems    taught   them    that  long  ago  their 

^  Claims  of  tlie  Bible  and  of  Science,  p.  104.  -  lb.  p.  142. 

VOL.  I.  F  F 


434  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

fathers  were  not  like  the  barbarous  Thrakian  and  Scythian 
tribes  of  their  own  day, — that  the  Achaians  of  Agamemnon 
had,  like  themselves,  a  respect  for  law,  and  a  greater  respect 
than  they  had  for  the  equal  companionship  of  men  and 
women  ;  and  so  these  epic  poems  are  genuine  and  veracious 
histories.  After  all,  the  evidence  for  facts  is  a  matter  of  little 
consequence.  Great  events,  like  the  victories  of  Salamis  and 
Plataia,  are  truths  rather  than  facts. 

"  They  are  taken  out  of  the  region  of  letters.  They  do  not 
depend  any  longer  on  the  credibility  of  records.  They  have 
established  themselves  in  the  very  existence  of  humanity. 
You  cannot  displace  them  without  denying  that,  or  re- 
making it  anew,  according  to  some  theory  or  fashion  of 
your  own."  ^ 

These  utterances  of  Mr.  Maurice  were  to  me  unintelligible 
at  the  time  when  they  were  published,  and  they  remain  un- 
intelligible still.  But  we  have  to  note  them  patiently,  if  we 
would  see  how  far  he  was  qualified  to  deal  with  the  criticisms 
of  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  or  indeed  with  any  narrative  of  facts. 
It  is  hard  to  see  what  end  can  be  attained  by  his  method  but 
that  of  complete  bewilderment.  Mr.  Maurice  spoke  with 
something  like  contempt  for  those  who  "  believe  in  nothing 
but  contemporary  testimony,"  and  asked  how  Sir  Cornewall 
Lewis  could  reach  such  a  conclusion 

*•  with  all  the  proofs  which  the  Crimean  War  and  the  Indian 
Mutiny  gave  him  of  its  utter  untrustworthiness." 

Sir  G.  C.  Lewis,  he  insisted 

"  could  believe  in  no  evidence  coming  to  his  own  reason  and 
conscience  ;  he  could,  after  living  through  the  Crimean  War 
and  the  Indian  Mutiny,  depend  upon  the  contemporary 
testimony  which  told  him   one  day  that  the  defeats  of  the 

[^  Claims  of  the  Bible  and  of  Science,  p.  75. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  435 

Russians  were  entirely  due  to  the  French,  the  next  that 
the  French  had  ahnost  no  share  in  them  ;  one  day  that 
hundreds  of  men  and  women  were  mutilated  by  the  Sepoys, 
the  next  that  there  were  none."  ^ 

If,  on  reading  these  sentences,  bewilderment  gives  place  to 
a  weaker  feeling,  or  even  vanishes,  it  is  only  because  we  are 
driven  to  the  conclusion  that,  when  a  question  is  treated  thus, 
words  are  wasted.  Did  Mr.  Maurice  disbelieve  absolutely 
the  occurrence  of  the  Crimean  War  and  of  the  Indian  Mutiny  .' 
Whatever  notions  either  he  or  any  one  else  may  entertain 
about  either  of  these  events,  if  they  be  events,  what  proofs 
apart  from  contemporary  evidence  can  be  adduced  in  support 
of  either  of  them  .-'  If  Mr.  Maurice  knew  of  any  testimony 
which  has  fallen  down  from  Jupiter,  he  has  given  no  hint  of 
his  knowledge.  But,  in  truth,  all  this  declamation  comes 
from  the  familiar  logical  fault  of  an  undi.'3'tributed  middle.  Sir 
Cornewall  Lewis  never  said  that  all  contemporary  testimony 
was  of  necessity  absolutely  trustworthy  ;  and  most  assuredly 
he  never  would  have  allowed  that  all  must  be  worthless  be- 
cause some  may  be  false. 

Such  statements,  many  of  them  altogether  irrelevant,  almost 

all    of   them    proving    too   much,    serve    only   to    show    how 

greatly  and  urgently  Bishop  Colenso's  criticisms  were  needed. 

The  device  of  plausible  fiction  has  been  employed,  often  with 

marvellous    success,  in   most   countries    and    ages ;    but    Mr. 

Maurice  was  able  to  shut  his  eyes  to  the  fact,  and  found  a 

proof  of  the  historical   trustworthiness  of  the   Pentateuch  in 

the  style  and  form  of  its  contents.     The  Levitical  legislation 

was  exceedingly  minute,  and  has  very  little  of  the  air  of  a 

romance  ;  we  may  therefore,  forsooth,  safely  assign   it   to  the 

age  of  Moses.     Moses  himself  is  not  such  a  personage  as  an 

epic    poet    might   picture    to    himself     He    is    described    as 

encountering  all  manner  of  difficulties  and  opposition. 

^  Life  of  Maurice,  vol.  ii.  p.  510. 

F  F  2 


436  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  ix 

"  But  He  who  has  sent  him  prevails  over  the  tyrant,  bears 
with  the  murmurs  of  the  slaves,  educates  them  to  trust 
through  their  distrust,  orders  their  society,  gives  them  laws, 
statutes,  a  tabernacle,  and  priests  to  minister  in  it." 

We  may  therefore  without  misgiving  ascribe  the  Levitical 
legislation  to  the  time  of  the  sojourn  in  the  wilderness, 
although  the  sentence  simply  begs  the  whole  question.  With 
the  same  wonderful  assurance  Mr.  Maurice  asks  his  readers  to 
give  credence  to  the  story  of  Noah,  on  the  ground  that  it  is 
"  familiar  and  prosaic,"  although  the  remark  applies  strictly, 
so  far  as  language  is  concerned,  to  every  tale  in  the  Arabian 
Nights  legends.  There  is  the  less  reason  to  distrust  it, 
because  it  is  "  not  surrounded  with  all  kinds  of  romantic 
incidents."  This  may  be  a  matter  of  opinion  ;  but  it  is  at 
least  as  easy  and  as  reasonable  to  maintain  that  the  incidents 
are  romantic  from  beginning  to  end.  The  building  of  a  house 
or  ark  larger  than  the  largest  of  modern  ships,  the  mighty 
procession  of  living  things  which  are  to  inhabit  it,  the  rising 
of  the  enormous  structure  with  its  flat  floor  on  the  swirling 
waters  which  have  ingulfed  a  world,  the  success  with  which  it 
keeps  its  balance  in  the  tumult  of  the  currents  sweeping 
round  a  submerged  globe,  the  story  of  the  dove  and  of  the 
olive-branch  which  has  been  some  miles  under  water  for  a 
year  or  more,  keeping  its  leaves  still  green,  are  surely  not 
familiar  incidents  of  every-day  life  ;  but  if  they  were,  such 
incidents  cannot  of  themselves  give  weight  to  any  narrative. 
Some  of  the  legends  of  Numa  Pompilius  are  familiar  and 
prosaic.  The  constitution  of  Servius  Tullius  is  exceedingly 
minute  and  utterly  free  from  the  slightest  admixture  of 
romance.  It  is  as  calm,  sober,  and  practical  as  an  English 
Act  of  Parliament ;  and  yet  it  is  nothing  more  than  an 
elaborate  piece  of  plausible  fiction,  thrust  into  a  narrative  of 
traditions   which   are   utterly  incredible  and  impossible.      It 


I 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.         437 

does  not,  indeed,  follow  that  because  the  constitution  of 
Servius  has  no  reality,  therefore  the  Levitical  legislation  is  a 
fiction  ;  but  it  is  absurd  to  infer  the  reality  of  the  latter  from 
the  particularity  of  its  details  or  the  homeliness  of  the 
language  in  which  its  precepts  are  conveyed. 

To  all  such  considerations  Mr.  Maurice  shut  his  eyes,  while 
yet  his  own  method  was  both  eclectic  and  rationalistic.  It 
was  eclectic,  because  he  chose  to  dwell  on  those  parts  of  the 
narrative  which  told  in  favour  of  his  teaching,  while  he  made 
no  reference  to  other  portions  which  told  against  it.  It  was 
rationalistic,  because  in  many  cases  he  substituted  a  narrative 
of  his  own  in  place  of  that  which  he  professed  to  receive  as 
the  Mosaic  record.  It  is  true  that  this  method  may  be 
applied  to  the  Koran  ;  and  it  may  be  rightly  applied,  so  long 
as  it  is  done  openly.  There  are  some  Suras  which  are  as 
nearly  perfect  as  any  words  uttered  by  human  lips  can  be  ; 
and  if  in  dealing  with  the  Pentateuch  we  say  plainly  that 
we  are  separating  the  gold  from  the  alloy,  the  process  is 
thoroughly  legitimate.  But  it  is  disingenuous  and  sophistical 
to  leave  the  impression  that  the  alloy  either  is  absent  or  is 
infinitesimally  small.  This  is  what  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
refused  to  do,  and  what  Mr.  Maurice  did  systematically. 
The  latter  omitted  all  mention  of  laws  which  appear  cruel 
and  actions  which  seem  inhuman,  when  these  laws  are  stated 
to  proceed,  and  these  actions  to  receive  encouragement,  from 
God.  He  would  not  assert  in  so  many  words  that  God  gave 
His  expressed  sanction  to  the  laws  of  slavery,  concubinage, 
and  marriage, — to  the  extermination  of  whole  nations,  whose 
extermination  was  never  accomplished  or  attempted, — to 
wholesale  massacres  of  enemies  and  prisoners.  He  denied 
in  plain  terms  ^  that  Jewish  slavery  was  caused  or  decreed  by 
God,  although  the  whole  legislation  about  slaves  is  asserted 
to  come  from  God  as  distinctly  as  the  declaration  that  He 
1  Servians  o?i  the  Old  Testament,  Sermon  XVI.  p.  306. 


438  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

dwells  in  the  high  and  holy  place  with  those  that  are  of  a 
contrite  heart  and  humble  spirit.  Some  might,  perhaps,  be 
perplexed  to  know  what  Mr.  Maurice  meant  by  the  Divine 
sanction  ;  and  on  this  difficulty  some  light  may  be  thrown 
by  the  following  words  : — 

"  The  Jewish  legislator,  referring  all  his  wisdom,  all  the 
sanction  of  his  laws,  to  the  unseen  Deliverer  and  Ruler, 
sinking  himself  altogether,  exhibiting  the  sins  of  his  family 
and  tribe,  conferred  a  blessing  upon  Israelites  which  we  can 
only  appreciate  by  considering  its  effects  on  those  who 
accepted  his  words  most  strictly."  ^ 

If  we  accept  Mr.  Maurice's  words  strictly,  it  would  follow 
that  in  every  single  instance  in  which  Moses  or  other  Hebrew 
leaders  and  judges  propounded  a  law  or  an  ordinance  under 
the  sanction,  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord  God,"  he  or  they  were 
referring  their  wisdom  to  the  unseen  Deliverer  and  Ruler  ; 
and  that  when  they  claimed  that  sanction  for  the  law  of 
jealousy  or  the  massacre  of  the  Midianite  children,  they 
were  only  sinking  themselves  altogether,  out  of  reverence 
to  Him  in  whom  all  live,  move,  and  are.  It  would  follow, 
further,  that  the  words  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  are  utterances 
of  deep  moral  conviction,  coming  from  men  who  habitually 
refer  their  thoughts  to  God,  and  sink  their  own  individuality 
in  the  sanction  which  they  claim  for  their  words.  If  this  was 
(and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  was)  his  meaning,  Mr. 
Maurice  was  virtually  saying  that,  while  God  speaks  in  every 
true  word  contained  in  the  Pentateuch  and  every  other  part 
of  the  Bible,  yet  the  book  contains  at  least  some  things  which 
do  not  proceed  from  Him  at  all.  It  would  have  been  more 
simple  and  straightforward  to  say  this,  instead  of  indulging  in 
generalisations  which  exhibit  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  as  a 
grand  and  harmonious  unity    never  marred  by  the  faintest 

^  Claims  of  the  Bible  and  of  Science, '^.  143. 


i86s.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  439 

discord.  So  thinking  and  speaking,  Mr.  Maurice  naturally 
disliked  any  careful  or  rigorous  handling  of  these  old  nar- 
ratives. It  is  perhaps  his  strongest  ground  of  complaint 
against  the  Bishop  of  Natal  that  he  assumed  the  Pentateuch 
to  be  giving 

"  not  a  revelation  of  God's  ways  to  men,  of  His  mode  of 
governing  men  and  holding  intercourse  with  them,  but  a 
narrative  of  events  w^hich  are  unlike  any  other  events  that 
havehappened  in  any  generation  since."  ^ 

Mr.  Maurice  was,  as  usual,  overstating  his  case.  The 
Bishop  had  treated  the  story  simply  as  a  narrative  of  his- 
torical events,  to  be  tested  by  the  rules  which  are  applied 
to  all  events  in  any  generation  whether  before  or  since.  In  so 
doing,  the  Bishop  was  only  applying  to  Jewish  history  the 
method  which  had  been  already  applied  to  the  ancient  tradi- 
tions of  Greece  and  Rome,  of  Egypt,  Assyria,  Persia,  and 
India.  There  remained  only  the  earlier  history  of  the  Jews 
to  serve  as  a  field  for  the  same  rigorous  scrutiny.  That 
history,  like  the  traditional  history  of  Rome,  was  found  on 
examination  to  present  a  number  of  narratives  more  or  less 
contradictory,  with  details  apparently  as  inconsistent  as  they 
were  minute.  It  exhibited  a  chronology  not  less  artificial, 
and  institutional  legends  not  less  clearly  declaring  their 
own  character  ;  while,  to  complete  the  parallel,  it  contained  an 
elaborate  political  and  religious  legislation,  of  the  actual  exist- 
ence of  which  the  subsequent  history  of  the  people  fails  to  give 
sufficient,  if  indeed  any,  evidence.  The  conclusion  was  in- 
evitable. The  traditions  of  the  Hebrew  nation  before  the  rise 
of  contemporary  writers  could  not  be  accepted  as  authentic 
history.  The  traditions  themselves  might  inforcc  the  sublimest 
of  all  lessons,  the  most  precious  of  all  truths.  The  critic  was 
concerned  with    the    simple  question   of  fact.     They   might 

^   Claims  of  the  Bible  and  of  Science,-^.  102. 


440  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

contain  much  real  history  mixed  up  with  the  colouring  of 
legend  ;  but  the  critic  had  no  warrant  for  determining  posi- 
tively in  every  instance  what  was  fact  and  what  was  fiction. 
Such  was  the  simple  conclusion  to  which  an  examination  of 
the  Pentateuch  brought  the  Bishop  of  Natal  :  and  this  is  the 
simple  question,  which  must  be  held  up  as  the  only  point  at 
issue.  It  matters  not  what  or  how  great  may  be  the  interests 
or  the  hopes  involved,  or  supposed  to  be  involved,  in  it.  We 
have  before  us,  in  the  early  Hebrew  history,  a  narrative  of 
alleged  facts  ;  and  each  one  of  these  alleged  facts  either  took 
place  or  did  not  take  place.  That  history  may  exhibit 
lessons  which  we  can  ill  afford  to  part  with.  It  may  carry 
with  it,  for  certain  minds,  a  consolation  and  encouragement 
which  they  will  tell  us  that  they  cannot  do  without.  But 
the  Mosaic  and  Levitical  legislation  remains,  nevertheless, 
as  much  the  subject  of  historical  criticism  as  the  reforms 
of  the  Spartan  Lycurgus  or  the  constitution  of  Servius 
Tullius. 

But,  having  so  overstated  the  case,  Mr.  Maurice  added 
that  the  Bishop 

"  demands  that  there  should  be  a  minute  accuracy  in  all  the 
details  of  these  events,  to  insure  their  credibility,  which 
would  not  be  needed  to  insure  the  credibility  of  any  other 
events." 

To  a  certain  extent  this  depends  on  the  judge  ;  and  as  a 
judge  Sir  Cornewall  Lewis  would  have  been  probably  far 
more  rigorous  than  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  Not  content  with 
this,  Mr.  Maurice  further  insisted  that  "  the  moment  he  missed 
that  accurac}',"  the  whole  narrative  was  dismissed  as  worth- 
less. This  charge  was  both  unjust  and  untrue,  although  Mr. 
Maurice  had  no  wish  to  be  either  untrue  or  unjust.  Was  it 
a  "  minute  inaccuracy  "  which  carries  the  life  of  Adam  down 
to  that  of  Noahj  and   makes  the  life  of  Noah    overlap,  or 


I 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  441 


nearly  overlap,  that  of  Abraham  ;  or  which  records  as  actually 
working  from  the  time  of  the  Sinaitic  sojourn  a  legislation 
to  whose  existence  the  later  history  bears  little  testimony  or 
none  ?  The  results  might,  of  course,  be  unwelcome.  They 
would  be  so  in  the  highest  degree  to  a  mind  which,  like  that 
of  Mr.  Maurice,  could  not  see  the  positive  gain  which  might 
often  come  from  negative  conclusions. 

"  Researches  into  ancient  history  which  lead  to  merely  nega- 
tive results  are  important  and  useful,  as  well  as  similar 
researches  which  lead  to  positive  results.  They  distinguish 
between  fiction — which,  however  diverting,  instructive,  and 
elevating,  can  never  be  historical — and  reality,  which  is  a 
necessary  attribute  of  an  historical  narrative."  ^ 

These  are  the  words  of  Sir  Cornewall  Lewis,  than  whom 
in  this  domain  of  ancient  history  few  critics  have  been  more 
destructive.  But  it  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  even  under 
his  potent  wand  the  whole  of  early  Roman  history  vanishes 
into  air.  The  cardinal  fact  of  that  history  is  the  conflict  of 
the  several  orders  in  the  State  ;  and  that  fact  remains,  and  is 
borne  out  by  the  subsequent  history  of  the  commonwealth  ; 
or,  in  Mr.  Maurice's  language,  we  still  have  that  from  which 
we  may  draw  "lessons."  It  would  not  be  less  absurd  and 
untrue  to  say  that  all  Jewish  history  vanished  at  the  touch  of 
the  Bishop  of  Natal.  The  Exodus  remained,  with  the 
ascendency  acquired  by  a  poor  and  exiled  people  over  the 
inhabitants  of  a  land  in  which  they  had  once  sojourned  them- 
selves. There  is  still  the  sharp  contrast  between  them  and 
the  Canaanitish  tribes  by  the  belief  of  their  leaders  in  one 
Living  God,  and  by  their  possession  of  a  law  higher  than 
any  known  to  the  nations  whether  of  Palestine  or  of  Egypt. 
There  remained,  in  fact,  enough  to  yield  all  those  lessons 
which    animated    the    countrymen   of   Wyclif  and   Cranmer, 

^  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis,  Ofi  the  Asiro7iomy  of  the  Ancients^  p.  433. 


442  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

and  nerved  the  hearts  of  the  sturdy  peasants  who  met  at 
Ruth'.  Bishop  Colenso  did  not,  indeed,  profess  to  receive  the 
narrative  as  it  stood ;  and  in  this  lay  his  strength.  Mr. 
Maurice  did  profess  this  ;  and  the  result  was  language  which 
had  too  much  the  likeness  of  sophistry.  The  lay  corre- 
spondent whose  question  led  to  the  writing  of  the  book  on 
TJie  Claims  of  the  Bible  mid  of  Science  had  spoken  of  many  as 
fearing  that,  "  if  once  they  allow  the  historical  reality  of  the 
physical  account  of  the  Deluge  to  be  called  in  question,  they 
are  guilty  of  doubting  the  word  of  Him  who  is  Truth  "  ;  and 
on  this  point  Mr.  Maurice  gave  the  following  explanation  : — 

"  There  may  be  an  historical  reality  in  that  which  does  not  in 
the  least  correspond  with  those  facts  with  which  the  physical 
student  is  occupied.  It  might  be  true  of  a  deluge  covering 
a  very  small  portion  of  the  earth,  that  God  saved  a  man 
and  his  family  from  perishing  in  it ;  that  He  gave  him  a 
warning  of  the  calamity  which  was  coming,  before  it  came  ; 
that  He  taught  him  how  to  save  his  family,  and  how  to 
save  creatures  of  various  kinds  in  the  same  building  in 
which  he  himself  took  refuge.  All  this  might  be  a  very 
simple,  child-like  narrative  of  an  historical  fact,  not  in  the 
least  legendary."  ^ 

Of  course  it  might ;  and  if  Mr.  Maurice  had  intended  to 
give  this  as  the  historical  nucleus  round  which  the  Noachian 
story  had  grown  up,  it  may  safely  be  said  that  no  objection 
Avould  have  been  offered  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  But  it  did 
not  follow  that  because  this  nucleus  was  historical  the  Noachian 
narrative  was  historical  also.  The  inference  would  rather  be 
the  other  way ;  but  whatever  Mr.  Maurice's  hypothetical 
story  might  be,  it  was  not  the  narrative  of  the  Book  of 
Genesis,  and  it  violated  the  Mosaic  record  in  its  essential 
particulars.     That  record  spoke  of  a  flood  over  all  the  earth, 

1  Claims  of  the  Bible  and  of  Science,  p.  109. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.         443 

covering  the  high  hills  ;  of  the  gathering  of  all  living  creatures 
of  every  kind  ;  of  the  destruction  of  every  living  thing  which 
did  not  enter  the  ark,  and  of  every  living  substance  on  the 
face  of  the  ground,  although  the  olive-branch  survived  with  its 
leaves  several  miles  under  water.  It  was  a  strange  method  of 
dealing  with  the  Book  of  Genesis.  According  to  Sir  Cornewall 
Lewis,  any  fact  of  history  is  a  fixed  quantity ;  from  Mr. 
Maurice's  words  we  might  suppose  that  it  was  an  elastic  line. 
That  the  plain  statements  of  the  tale  involved  some  difficulty, 
he  was  constrained  to  admit ;  but  he  asked  : — 

""  Has  then  that  length  or  breadth  anything  to  do  with  it  ?  I 
should  say  'absolutely  nothing,'  if  I  did  not  reflect  that  just 
in  proportion  as  my  thoughts  of  the  earth  expand,  I  must 
treat  the  principle — the  lazu  of  this  narrative — as  also  ex- 
panding. If  it  was  true  once  that  God  punished  men  for 
their  lust  and  violence,  it  is  so  still."  ^ 

Who  doubts  it  .'*  But  why  is  it  said  .''  The  remark  applies 
with  fully  equal  force  to  the  overthrow  of  Xerxes,  and 
Herodotus  insists  on  the  lesson  again  and  again  with  all  the 
earnestness  of  Mr.  Maurice.  But  although  he  had  thus  got 
rid  of  some  of  the  restraints  of  ordinary  historical  criticism, 
Mr.  Maurice  had  still  some  qualms,  and  he  proceeded  to  allay 
these  by  objecting  that,  for  Bishop  Colenso, 

*'  a  small  fact  is  no  fact  at  all.  Noah's  deluge  must  have  been 
universal,  else  why  make  so  much  of  it  .■'  I  reply,  because 
the  whole  Bible  is  occupied  about  small  areas,  little  families, 
contemptible  tribes."  ^ 

Mr.  Maurice  may  have  made  this  statement  in  good  faith. 
It  is,  nevertheless,  not  true.  It  is  absurd  to  speak  of  kings 
who  could  make  equal  alliances  with  some  of  the  mightiest 
monarchies  of  the  East  as  the  sovereigns  of  little  families  or 

^  Claims  of  tJic  Bible  and  of  Science,  "g.  in.  -  /^.  p.  114. 


444  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

contemptible  tribes,  absurd  to  speak  of  the  empire  of  Solomon 
as  a  small  area  ;  and  the  account  of  this  empire  is  certainly- 
included  in  "  the  whole  Bible."  It  remains  further  an  open 
question  whether  the  historian  of  the  Deluge  was  altogether 
unacquainted  with  the  larger  area  which  extended  "from  the 
one  sea  to  the  other — from  the  flood  unto  the  world's  end." 
Here,  however,  as  elsewhere,  Mr.  Maurice  escaped  with  instinc- 
tive eagerness  into  that  ethereal  region  in  which  alone  he  could 
breathe  freely,  and  then  returned  to  defend  himself  against 
the  charge  of  cowardice  for  not  informing  his  people  that  they 
have  been  deceiving  themselves  in  heeding  the  story  of  "  a 
deluge."  This  contempt  he  admitted  that  he  should  deserve, 
if  ever  he  bade  them  hold  any  opinion  about  the  Deluge  which 
he  "  did  not  hold  "  himself  What  then  was  his  opinion  ?  The 
Book  of  Genesis  asserts  that  the  flood  was  universal :  he  had 
said  that  it  was  very  partial.  The  former  says  that  all  species 
were  represented  in  the  ark  :  Mr.  Maurice  said  that  some  only 
were  sheltered  in  it.  The  Mosaic  record  maintains  that  all 
other  men  and  all  other  flesh  died :  Mr.  Maurice  declared 
that,  for  all  we  know,  a  great  many  in  other  parts  of  the  earth 
may  have  remained  alive.  He  had  left  scarcely  an  incident 
of  the  narrative  unmodified,  and  then  asked  his  readers  to 
heed  the  story  of  a  deluge,  when  the  simple  question  was 
whether  the  Noachian  story,  and  no  other,  is  a  matter  of  fact 
or  not.  It  is  mere  specious  argument,  if  it  be  not  rank 
absurdity,  to  talk  of  the  principle  of  the  story.  There  are 
thousands  of  overwhelming  calamities  which,  if  the  Noachian 
Deluge  were  proved  to  be  the  merest  fiction,  might  still  teach 
us  that  God  "  punishes  men  for  their  lust  and  violence." 
Only  we  have  received  a  caution  not  to  judge  those  who 
were  crushed  by  the  falling  tower  in  Siloam,  or  the  earthquake 
of  Lisbon. 

In  short,  Mr.  Maurice,  in  these  criticisms  on  Bishop  Colenso, 
dealt  with  the  Mosaic  story  of  the  Deluge  much  as  Thucydides 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  445 

treated  the  tale  of  the  Trojan  War.  It  is  conceivably  possible 
that  both  Mr.  Maurice  and  Thucydides  may  have  hit  upon  the 
real  historical  residuum  in  each  case  ;  but  we  cannot  have  any 
warrant  or  evidence  for  this,  beyond  their  own  word.  In  both 
the  tales  the  several  incidents  form  one  coherent  whole.  In 
the  Trojan  story, 

"If  we  are  asked  whether  it  be  not  a  legend  embodying 
portions  of  historical  matter  and  raised  upon  a  basis  of 
truth ;  whether  there  may  not  really  have  occurred  at  the 
foot  of  the  hill  of  Priam  a  war  purely  human  and  political, 
without  gods,  without  heroes,  without  Helens,  without 
Amazons,  without  Ethiopians  under  the  beautiful  son  of 
Eos  ;  ....  if  we  are  asked  whether  there  was  not  really 
some  such  historical  Trojan  war  as  this,  our  answer  must  be 
that,  as  the  possibility  of  it  cannot  be  denied,  so  neither  can 
the  reality  of  it  be  affirmed."  ^ 

It  is  not  easy  to  see  what  would  under  any  circumstances 
be  gained  by  dissecting  in  the  same  fashion  the  Noachian 
story  of  the  Deluge,  and  then  talking  of  the  principle  of  an 
event  which,  in  the  form  propounded,  had  been  really  fabri- 
cated by  Mr.  Maurice  himself.  Had  Mr.  Maurice  put  forth 
these  conclusions  as  his  own,  in  place  of  the  Noachian  story  as 
it  has  come  down  to  us,  it  would  have  shown  at  once  that  he 
ranked  the  Pentateuch  with  all  other  histories,  although  the 
soundness  of  the  method  by  which  he  reached  the  residuum 
might  still  be  questioned.  Critics  like  Sir  Cornewall  Lewis 
might  have  said  that  he  spoke  too  positively  about  events 
which  belong  to  a  pre-historic  age  ;  but  the  admission  that 
Mr.  Maurice  regarded  the  history  of  the  Pentateuch  as  a  fair 
subject  for  scrutiny  would  have  gone  far  towards  quieting  the 
stormy  waters  of  the  controversy  provoked  by  the  publication 
of  the  Bishop's  volumes.    It  would  have  shown  that  he  shared 

^  Grote,  HtstoTy  of  Grcese,  vol.  i.  p.  434. 


446  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

Dean  Milman's  conviction  that  "  the  words  of  Christ,  and  His 
words  alone  (the  primal,  indefeasible  truths  of  Christianity) 
shall  not  pass  away."  ^  It  would  have  dealt  another  blow  on 
that  exaggerated  or  false  dogmatism  which  has  overlaid 
those  words  by  doctrines  which  are  not  His.  It  would  also 
have  shown  that  the  vast  gulf  which  Mr.  Maurice  supposed 
to  intervene  between  himself  and  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was 
really  but  a  narrow  channel  created  by  his  own  unreasonable 
and  unreasoning  fears. 

We  should,  however,  be  doing  Mr.  Maurice  a  gross  injustice 
were  we  to  put  out  of  sight  the  really  vast  gulf  which  separated 
him  from  the  rank  and  file  of  those  who  came  forward  to 
uphold  what  they  called  the  authority  and  inspiration  of  the 
Scriptures.  For  him  every  narrative  even  of  the  earliest  books 
of  the  Old  Testament  was  instinct  with  a  living  spirit  ;  and 
this  spirit  was  the  Spirit  of  the  God  of  Truth,  of  Righteousness, 
and  of  Love.  These  books  revealed  to  him  nothing  but  things 
lovely,  and  beautiful,  and  of  good  report.  They  pointed  to  the 
conflict  between  truth  and  falsehood,  and  to  the  great  con- 
summation in  the  victory  of  righteousness  over  sin.  They 
left  him,  therefore,  precisely  on  the  ground  on  which  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  had  taken  his  stand,  although  they  had 
reached  it  by  opposite  ways.  The  former  had  insisted  on  his 
right  to  draw  all  these  lessons  from  these  books,  and  to  con- 
tend, b)'  some  strange  mental  process,  that  apart  from  these 
books  they  could  not  have  been  learnt  at  all.  The  latter 
showed  that  in  many,  if  not  in  most,  cases,  these  narratives 
did  not  teach  the  lessons  so  extracted  from  them,  and  that 
Mr.  Maurice's  attitude  in  the  matter  gave  unfortunate  encour- 
agement to  those  who  made  use  of  their  Bibliolatry  to  inforce 
on  the  people  the  most  horrible  falsehoods  and  superstitions. 
It  is  useless  to  blink  the  facts  of  the  case.  The  Bishop  of 
Natal  had  tested  the  historical  accuracy  of  the  Pentateuch, 
^  History  of  Latin  C/ifistianitj,  vol.  vi.  book  xiv.  ch.  x.  p.  447. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  447 

partly  because  he  was  moved  by  a  natural  desire  for  historical 
knowledge,  as  for  all  other  truth  ;  partly  by  a  wish  to  throw 
off  the  yoke  which  thrust  on  him  as  historically  true  a  narra- 
tive some  of  which  at  the  least  is  uncertain  ;  but,  most  of  all, 
by  a  longing  to  take  away  the  foundation  of  those  cruel 
notions  or  doctrines  which  are  scarcely  less  fatal  than  the 
Manicheeism  of  Simeon  Stylites, — in  short,  to  break  the 
chains  of  a  cruel  and  deadly  tyranny.  It  may  be  true  that 
no  great  amount  of  arithmetic  would  be  needed  to  "  induce 
men,"  in  Mr.  Maurice's  words,  "  to  throw  off  the  incubus  of  an 
authority  which  they  suppose  exists  to  curse  them  ; "  ^  but  it 
is  equally  true  that  they  who  represent  God  as  dooming  "  the 
immense  majority  of  His  creatures  to  hopeless  destruction," 
profess  to  speak  on  the  authority  and  by  the  command  of  an 
infallible  book.  The  blow  struck  against  this  fetish  worship 
had  called  forth  an  outburst  of  this  malignant  dogmatism. 
The  Primate  himself  had  declared  that  the  endless  torturing 
of  individual  sinners  was  our  only  warrant  or  assurance  for 
the  endless  happiness  of  the  righteous,  and  that  the  latter 
must  fall  with  the  former.  Another,  pleading  expressly  the 
sanction  of  the  New  Testament,  held  that  it  would  be  an 
insult  to  the  saved  if  a  harlot  or  a  thief  dying  impenitent 
were  admitted,  after  atonement  extended  over  billions  of 
years,  to  take  but  the  lowest  room  in  the  house  of  their 
Father  and  Redeemer.^  On  this  sanction,  together  with  the 
authority  of  that  which  he  spoke  of  as  the  Church,  this  same 
writer  condemned,  not  to  the  liinbus  pueronu>i,  or  limbo  of 
children,  but  to  the  hell  of  bodily  torture,  all  infants  dying 
unbaptized.^  To  these  he  had  unquestionably  the  authority 
of  Fulgentius  for  adding  those  who  die  before  birth  in  their 
mother's  womb.  Against  this  horrible  blasphemy  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  and  Mr.  Maurice  were  both  fighting  ;  and  we  have  to 

1  Claims  of  the  Bible  and  oj  Science,  p.  136. 

-  Christian  Remembrancer,  April  1863,  p.  476.  lb.  p.  477. 


448  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

remember  that  Mr,  Maurice  had  come  forth  first  to  bear  his 
righteous  testimony.  While  he  was  reproaching  the  Bishop 
for  taking  away  the  foundations  of  trust,  he  was  also 
denouncing 

^'  the  popular  interpretation,  not  for  its  severity,  but  for  the 
practical  laxity  which  its  fierceness  engenders,  .... 
because  it  deters  from  no  crime,  and  cultivates  the  despair 
which  is  the  cause  of  ten  thousand  crimes." 

While  he  looked  on  his  friend  as  obscuring  the  light  of  the 
Divine  Love,  he  was  uttering  the  golden  words — 

"  If  I  preached  that  there  would  be  no  deliverance  from  eternal 
death,  I  should  be  preaching  that  no  sinner  can  be  raised 
from  darkness  to  light,  from  the  power  of  Satan  to  God."  ^ 

He  who  could  thus  speak  might  well  have  withheld  the  hard 
words  which  he  cast  at  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  But,  great  and 
good  man  though  he  was,  in  Mr.  Maurice  the  historical  sense 
was  very  weak.  He  was  but  scantly  capable  of  weighing  the 
laws  and  applying  the  tests  of  historical  credibility  ;  and  hence 
it  was  that,  in  dealing  with  alleged  records  and  statements  of 
facts,  his  method  assumed,  in  the  eyes  of  men  who  wished 
simply  to  know  the  truth  of  facts,  very  much  the  appear- 
ance of  sophistry,  although  he  expressed  just  indignation 
at  the 

"  race  of  quacks  who  can  always  prove  what  they  are  wanted 
to  prove." 

Strange  to  say,  the  utterance  of  his  censure  is  followed  by  an 
attempt  to  prove  the  harmony  of  the  two  accounts  of  Creation, 
which  provokes  a  comparison  with  the  mysticism  that  spoke 
of  the  seven  sons  of  Job  as  meaning  the  twelve  Apostles,  and 
of  his  daughters  as  representing  the  faithful  laity.     It  was, 


Claims  of  the  Bible  and  of  Science,  p.  133. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  449 

therefore,  scarcely  possible  for  him  to  do  justice  to  the  Bishop 
of  Natal,  who  broached  no  theory,  who  put  forth  no  hypothesis, 
propounded  no  solutions,  but  set  himself  sedulously  to  deter- 
mine the  historical  value  of  certain  professedly  historical  records. 
The  controversy  provoked  by  Bishop  Colenso's  writings 
raised  some  curious  side  issues.  For  the  time  High  Church- 
men and  Low  Churchmen  alike  seemed  united  in  their 
enthusiasm  for  a  book  (or  series  of  books)  which  they 
regarded  as  a  direct  gift  from  God  ;  and  of  Broad  Churchmen 
or  muscular  Christians  some  at  least  seemed  resolved  that 
they  would  not  allow  others  to  outrun  them  in  their  zeal.  But 
it  never  seems  to  have  struck  any  of  them  that  they  might 
have  to  encounter  difficulties  with  other  prodigies  than  those 
related  in  the  Bible,  or  to  defend  themselves  against  home- 
thrusts  on  the  score  of  relic  worship.  Of  these  champions  of 
Christendom  not  a  few  insisted  that  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
had  during  three  or  more  millenniums  been  preserved  by 
special  Divine  interposition  from  mutilation,  interpolation,  or 
corruption,  that  they  were  in  short  like  a  picture  or  a  statue 
fresh  from  the  hands  of  the  painter  or  the  sculptor  ;  and  they 
insisted  with  not  less  vehemence  that  a  series  of  wonderful 
incidents  recorded  in  those  books  were  all  historical  facts,  and 
that  no  other  wonderful  incidents  could  be  included  under  the 
same  term.  Prominent  among  these  was  Mr.  Kingsley,  who, 
being  then  Modern  History  Professor  at  Cambridge,  under- 
took to  hurl  his  lance  first  at  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  and  then  at 
Dr.  Newman.  The  discussions  which  ensued  threw  a  singular 
light  first  on  the  arbitrary  method  which  regarded  as  fact 
certain  miracles  because  related  in  particular  writings,  as- 
against  others  because  they  were  not  recorded  in  those  books  ; 
and  next  on  the  dogged  pertinacity  which  will  take  up  any 
ground  rather  than  give  up  the  genuineness  of  a  relic.  Mr. 
Kingsley  had  applied  some  very  strong  language  to  Dr. 
Newman,  charging  him,  among  other  things,  with  "  stupendous 
VOL.  I.  G  G 


450  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  CHAP.  ix. 


silliness  "  because  he  thought  it  difficult  or  impossible  to  with- 
stand the  evidence  which  is  brought  for  the  liquefaction  of  the 
blood  of  St.  Januarius  at  Naples,  and  also  because  he  thought 
that  the  holy  coat  of  Treves  may  possibly  or  probably  be  a 
genuine  relic,  whereas  "  the  very  texture  and  material  of  the 
thing  prove  it  "  to  Mr.  Kingsley's  satisfaction  "  to  be  spurious." 
But  Mr.  Kingsley  had  read,  or  he  ought  to  have  read,  the 
preface  on  ecclesiastical  miracles  which  Dr.  Newman  had 
prefixed  to  a  translation  of  a  part  of  Fleury's  Ecclesiastical 
History,  and  in  which  he  argued  that  the  question  of  miracles 
is  one  wholly  of  evidence,  and  that  the  fact  of  a  miracle  in  any 
age  or  country  must  be  accepted  if  the  evidence  offered  for  it 
be  adequate.  It  followed  from  this  that  no  sharp  line  could, 
as  Mr.  Kingsley  held  that  it  could,  be  drawn,  on  one  side  of 
which  miracles  are  possible,  on  the  other  impossible.  It  would 
be  absurd,  therefore,  to  say  that  they  ceased  with  the  close  of 
the  Apostolic  age,  or  with  the  conversion  of  Constantine,  or 
to  deny  that  they  may  be  extended  down  to  our  own  time. 
Logically,  therefore,  no  one  who  accepted  the  miracles  of  the 
Bible  could  reject  contemptuously  the  miracles  of  St.  Augus- 
tine or  St.  Boniface  without  examining  the  evidence  in  each 
case  ;  and  any  one  who  urged  difficulties  with  regard  to  the 
latter  must  be  prepared  to  face  difficulties  which  may  be  urged 
against  the  former.  But  Mr.  Kingsley  would  have  it  that, 
as  miracles  do  not  occur  nowadays,  modern  narratives  of 
miracles  must  be  false  ;  and  he  insisted  at  the  same  time 
that  the  Pentateuch  was  written  by  Moses,  settling  the  debate 
by  the  triumphant  question,  "  If  Moses  did  not  write  the 
Pentateuch,  who  did  "i  "  Dr.  Newman  had  his  own  answer 
ready,  and  the  following  words,  though  nowhere  used  by  him, 
may  be  taken  as  fairly  representing  it. 

If   I   believe   that   the   blood    of  St.    Januarius  liquefied   at    \ 
Naples,  you  believe  that  a  long  time  ago  an  ass  spoke  with 


i 


1 865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  451 

articulate  human  speech  ;  that  an  iron  axe-head  was  made 
to  float  on  the  water,  instead  of  remaining  at  the  bottom  ; 
that  handkerchiefs  which  had  touched  an  Apostle's  body- 
were  endued  with  the  power  of  healing  diseases.  If  I  see 
no  special  harm  in  people  crowding  to  look  at  the  coat  at 
Treves,  you  have  no  special  condemnation  for  those  who 
fancied  that  their  sicknesses  would  be  cured  if  merely  the 
shadow  of  an  Apostle  passing  by  fell  on  them.  Moreover, 
for  my  belief  I  may  bring  up  the  testimony  of  a  hundred 
living  witnesses :  to  what  can  you  refer  me  but  to  the  mere 
statement  of  a  record  which  does  not  profess  to  be  con- 
temporary, and  for  which  there  is  no  corroborative  evidence 
whatever  ^  If  I  believe  in  the  genuineness  of  the  holy  coat, 
do  you  not  believe  in  the  genuineness  of  the  Pentateuch? 
Have  you  not  been  calling  the  Bishop  of  Natal  hard  names, 
and  charging  him  with  abandonment  of  the  faith,  because 
he  asserts,  and  gives  his  reasons  for  thinking,  that  your 
holy  coat  is  no  genuine  relic,  inasmuch  as  "  the  very  texture 
and  material  of  the  thing  prove  it  to  be  spurious"?  If  I 
believe  that  portions  of  the  true  cross  are  at  Rome  and 
elsewhere,  do  you  not  hold  that  not  a  portion  only  but  the 
whole,  or  something  very  like  the  whole,  of  the  writings 
of  Moses  have  come  down  to  us  in  their  integrity  .''  If 
the  tradition  of  the  Jews,  who,  as  you  say,  ought  to  know 
best,  is  that  Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch,  does  not  the 
tradition  of  Catholics,  who  ought  to  know  best,  affirm  that 
the  holy  coat  was  worn  by  our  Lord  "^  What  are  the  diffi- 
culties against  this  supposition  compared  with  those  which 
Bishop  Colenso  has  urged  against  your  theory  of  the 
authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  .-*  I  see  that  in  your  opinion 
the  debate  is  ended  by  asking,  "  If  Moses  did  not  write 
these  books,  who  ciid  ?  "  Bentley,  as  the  Bishop  of  Natal 
remarks,  would,  of  course,  have  said  that  it  was  no  part  of 
his  business  to  determine,  if  Phalaris  did  not  write  the 
epistles  of  Phalaris,  who  did  write  them.  But  at  the  least  I 
have  as  good  a  right  to  ask,  "  If  the  holy  coat  is  not  the 
work  of  those  who  wove  it  for  our  Lord,  whose  work 
is  it?" 

G  G  2 


452  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

It  is  strange,  indeed,  that  Mr.  Kingsley  should  not  have 
seen  with  how  serious  a  matter  he  was  deahng.  He  was 
bound,  by  the  terms  of  Dr.  Newman's  Essay,  to  prove  that 
miracles  called  ecclesiastical  stand  on  a  different  footing 
from  those  in  the  Bible.  He  attempted  nothing  of  the  sort ; 
but  he  turned  savagely  on  the  Bishop  of  Natal  because  he 
called  into  question  the  genuineness  of  a  relic  about  which 
Mr.  Kingsley  refused  to  entertain  a  doubt.  These  facts  alone 
would  suffice  to  show  not  merely  how  thoroughly  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  was  justified  in  undertaking  his  task,  but  how 
urgently  his  work  was  called  for.  If  the  clergy  and  laity  of 
the  Church  of  England  had  seen  things  in  the  light  in  which 
they  were  beheld  by  Dr.  Thirlwall,  all  the  criticisms  proving 
that  the  really  historical  residuum  in  the  Pentateuch  was  less 
than  they  had  taken  it  to  be  would  have  been  received  with 
interest  indeed,  but  dispassionately,  as  in  no  way  affecting 
any  higher  concerns.  Questions  relating  to  the  families  of 
the  Patriarchs,  to  the  sojourn  of  the  Israelites  first  in  Egypt, 
then  in  the  desert,  to  the  promulgation  of  the  moral,  the  civil, 
and  ecclesiastical  codes,  would  have  been  treated  on  the 
footing  of  questions  relating  to  the  expulsion  and  return  of 
the  Herakleids,  to  the  legislation  of  Lykourgos  (Lycurgus) 
or  Drakon  (Draco),  of  Solon,  or  Numa,  or  Manu.  One  man, 
and  one  man  only,  amongst  the  Bishops  of  English  sees,  had 
the  insight  to  discern  and  the  courage  to  say  this,  and  he 
said  it  with  a  clearness  which  left  no  room  for  misapprehen- 
sion.i  In  his  judgement  we  were  no  more  called  upon  to 
explain  away  difficulties  in  the  story  of  Samson,  or  in  the 
annals  of  the  children  of  Jacob,  than  to  take  part  in  the 
search  for  the  philosopher's  stone  or  the  elixir  of  life.  But 
the  replies  which  came  forth  in  shoals  on  the  publication  of 
each  part  of  the  Bishop's  work  implied  without  exception 
that,  if  the  defence  of  these  narratives  were  not  made  good, 

^  See  p.  310. 


1 86s.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.         453 

Christianity  itself  must  fall.  The  Bishop's  First  Part  pointed 
out  the  self-contradictions  in  the  accounts  of  the  children 
and  grandchildren  of  Jacob,  and  other  like  difficulties  in  the 
earlier  portions  of  the  Pentateuch  ;  and  the  self-styled  ortho- 
dox champions  hurried  into  the  fight  without  waiting  to  see 
whether  their  labours  might  not  all  be  rendered  useless  by 
arguments  and  evidence  still  to  be  adduced.  Such  evidence 
was  produced  in  the  Third  Part,  which  had  for  its  special 
object  to  show  the  composite  character  of  the  Pentateuch, 
and  the  later  date  at  which  much  of  it  must  have  come  into 
existence.  On  the  supposition  that  it  was  all  the  work  of  one 
author,  some  of  the  explanations  proffered  might  seem  to 
prop  up  a  tottering  wall ;  but  if  it  should  be  proved  that  it 
was  not,  and  could  not  be,  the  work  of  one  author,  then  these 
efforts  must,  as  the  Bishop  insisted, 

"  be  dismissed  at  once  as  merely  ingenious  attempts — like  the 
cycles  and  epicycles  of  the  old  Ptolemaic  system  of  astro- 
nomy— to  build  up  a  theory  which  has  no  real  foundation  in 
fact,  and  which  falls  at  last  by  the  weight  of  its  own  cumbrous 
additions,  and  must  be  swept  away  together  with  them."  ^ 

Some  of  these  pleaders  seemed  to  think  that,  if  they  shifted 
a  difficulty  ever  so  slightly,  they  had  got  rid  of  it  altogether. 
The  Bishop  had  pointed  out  the  very  astonishing  consequences 
involved  in  the  directions  given  to  the  priest,  Leviticus  iv.  12, 
about  the  carrying  of  the  dead  victims  to  a  place  without  the 
camp.  The  Bishop  had  treated  this  as  a  task  imposed  upon 
the  priest  personally  ;  and  at  once  a  broadside  was  opened 
against  his  Hebrew  scholarship,  and  his  folly  in  forgetting 
that  the  verb  had  here  a  causal  meaning.  The  point  is  by  no 
means  certain  ;  but  the  difficulty  remains  much  where  it  was. 

"  I  am  quite  ready,"  the  Bishop  rejoined,  "  to  admit  that  the 
Hebrew  word  here  employed  may  be  used  in  the  sense  of 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  viii. 


454  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  ix. 


carrying  out  with  the  help  of  others.  But  the  stress  of  my 
argument  is  not  laid  upon  the  necessity  of  the  priest  himself 
in  person  doing  this,  but  upon  the  fact  that  it  had  to  be  done 
by  somebody^ — that  all  the  ashes,  offal,  and  filth  of  every 
kind,  for  a  vast  city  as  large  as  London,  without  any  kind 
of  sewage  arrangements,  had  to  be  carried  out  daily  through 
the  crowded  streets  a  distance  of  six  miles."  ^ 

Difficulties  such  as  these  were  met  by  Mr.  Maurice  with  an 
indignant  remonstrance  against  the  temper  which  could  cast 
such  foulness  in  his  face,^  when  the  only  matter  of  any  moment 
was  the  training  of  the  people  to  the  conviction  of  the  Divine 
rule  and  the  Divine  love.  To  this,  again,  no  objection  needed 
to  be  made,  provided  only  that  all  were  ready  with  Mr.  Maurice 
to  treat  the  Pentateuch  merely  as  a  storehouse  of  wholesome 
lessons  and  edifying  instruction.  The  case  was  altered  when 
others  spoke  as  if  the  way  was  made  fairly  clear  by  the  hypo- 
thesis that  many  of  the  laws  were  never  meant  to  be  carried 
out  in  the  wilderness.  Thus  they  disposed  of  the  difficulty 
about  the  pigeons  or  turtledoves,  although  these  are  ordered, 
as  the  story  states,  by  Jehovah  Himself,  as  an  easy  offering 
for  a  poor  man  to  bring,  with  express  reference  to  their  life 
in  the  wilderness.^ 

This  method  of  putting  a  part  for  the  whole  runs  through 
many  or  most  of  the  replies  put  forth  to  the  Bishop's  earlier 
volumes.  A  writer  in  the  EdinbiirgJi  Review'^  eulogized  an 
anonymous  layman's  treatise^  as  effectually  disposing  "of 
the  greater  part  of  Dr.  Colenso's  objections "  by  appealing 
"  entirely  to  the  direct  evidence  of  the  Pentateuch  itself, 
interpreted  by  common-sense."  The  Reviewer  was  mistaken. 
The  objections  in  general  were  not  removed  at  all ;  and  it  is 

^  PentatcucJi,  Part  II.  p.  xiv. 

^  He  had  himself  already  spoken  of  sanitary  laws  as  a  necessary  part 
of  the  Divine  work.     See  p.  433. 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  xiv.  •*  No.  240,  p.  505. 

^  The  Historic  Character  of  the  Pentateuch  Vindicated. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  455 

obvious  (i)  that,  so  long  as  any  remained,  the  ground  taken 
by  Mr.  Burgon  and  Dr.  Baylee  was  lost ;  and  (2)  that  it  was 
only  against  this  position  that  the  Bishop's  labours  were 
directed.  Had  it  been  universally  admitted  that  the  narra- 
tives of  the  Pentateuch  were  records  comparable  precisely 
with  the  records  of  the  invasion  of  Xerxes,  or  the  exploits  of 
the  Roman  kings,  the  "  intelligent  Zulu  "  would  have  had  no 
need  to  put  his  searching  questions,  or,  if  he  had,  even  Lord 
Macaulay's  school-boy  would  have  known  how  to  answer  them. 
The  layman's  method,  however,  affected  to  dispose  of  one  of 
the  chief  difficulties  connected  with  the  numbers  of  the  Israelites 
at  the  time  of  the  Exodus  by  assuming  that  Jacob  went  down 
into  Egypt  with  "  a  thousand  or  more  "  followers,  who  were  all 
reckoned  as  his  children,  and  as  the  forefathers  of  the  two  or 
three  millions  who  escaped  from  captivity ;  and  this  in  the 
teeth  of  the  plain  statement  in  Deuteronomy  (x.  22),  "Thy 
fathers  went  down  into  Egypt  with  three  score  and  ten  per- 
sons," and  although,  as  the  Bishop  adds, 

"  it  is  equally  plain  that  ten  asses  (Genesis  xiii.  26,  27)  could 
scarcely  have  brought  up  corn  enough  from  Egypt  to 
support  a  thousand  servants,  besides  Jacob's  own  children 
and  grandchildren,  for  twelve  months  in  a  time  of  famine." 

After  the  same  fashion  the  perplexities  involved  in  the 
numbers  of  the  priests  are  supposed  to  be  met  by  the  supposi- 
tion that  the  priests  formed  originally  five  households,  of 
which  Aaron,  Nadab,  Abihu,  Eleazar,  and  Ithamar  were  the 
heads  ;  that  each  of  the  families  consisted  of  about  forty  souls, 
including  a  considerable  number  of  servants  ;  and  that  all  the 
males  of  the  proper  age  among  them  all  were  reckoned  as 
sons  of  Aaron,  and  priests,  although  it  is  distinctly  stated 
that  there  were  only  three.  Another  objection,  which,  the 
layman  allowed,  would,  if  established,  be  fatal  to  the 
entire    argument,  was    thought   to    be    disposed    of   by   the 


456  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

assertion  that  the  first-borns  of  man  were  not  to  be  "  openers 
of  the  womb,"  although  it  is  distinctly  stated  (Exodus  xiii.  2) 
that  they  were. 

The  Bishops  generally  seemed  to  think  it  their  duty  to  treat 
Dr.  Colenso's  work  as  almost  beneath  contempt.  Bishop 
Wilberforce  spoke  of  his  arguments  as  "  but  the  repetition  of 
old  and  often-answered  cavils,"  but  at  the  same  time  denounced 
the  book  as  doing  an  amount  of  evil  which  it  was  difficult  to 
estimate.  If  Bishop  Wilberforce  meant  that  these  arguments 
had  been  satisfactorily  and  conclusively  answered,  it  was 
surely  nothing  less  than  his  duty,  and  that  of  all  his  colleagues 
on  the  bench  who  agreed  with  him,  to  put  forth  these  answers, 
and  commend  them  with  their  solemn  sanction  to  the  whole 
body  of  the  faithful.  But  nothing  of  the  sort  was  done,  or 
seemingly  even  thought  of.  Of  collective  action  there  was 
none.  Individually  some  of  them  pronounced  his  criticisms 
to  be  "  rash  and  feeble,"  "  unfounded,  false,  and  childish  ; " 
and  one  of  them  in  one  short  letter,  forbidding  him  to  minister 
in  his  diocese,  applied  either  to  him  or  to  his  work  the  follow- 
ing choice  expressions — "  heretical,"  "  blasphemous,"  "  abomin- 
able," "unhappy,"  "blind,"  "  daring,"  "  ignorant  self-sufficiency," 
"  instrument  of  Satan,"  "  poor  Bishop  Colenso."  ^ 

In  truth,  while  from  all  parts  of  the  country  he  was  receiving 
letters  of  sympathy  from  clergymen  and  laymen,  urging  him 
to  carry  on  and  complete  his  labours,  he  might  well  confess 
himself  disappointed  at  the  course  adopted  towards  him  by 
the  great  body  of  his  episcopal  brethren. 

"  I  had  no  reason,"  he  said,  "to  suppose  that' I  should  receive 
from  all  of  them  expressions  of  sympathy  or  encouraging 
help  in  my  work.  .  .  .  But  I  did  not  imagine  that  so  many 
Bishops  of  England,  with  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  at  their 
head,  would  have  absolutely  ignored  the  existence  of 
such  a  science  as  Biblical  criticism,  and  its  undoubted  and 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  xv. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  457 

undeniable  results  in  its  application  to  the  earlier  Hebrew 
Scriptures.  I  believed  that  there  were  men  of  science  and 
scholars  among  them,  who,  being  acquainted  generally  with 
these  results,  would  be  aware  of  their  reality  and  importance, 
and  who  would  feel  it  to  be  impossible,  in  this  age  of 
inquiry,  any  longer  to  bar  out  their  admission,  as  facts  to 
be  taken  account  of,  like  any  of  the  facts  of  science,  by  the 
more  intelligent  minds  of  the  Church  of  England.  I  had 
hoped  that  their  influence  would  have  prevailed  to  check 
the  hasty  judgement  of  others,  less  informed  than  them- 
selves on  these  matters  ;  and  that  if  my  episcopal  brethren 
generally,  did  not  think  it  expedient  to  hold  out  to  me  a 
brotherly  right  hand  of  fellowship — if  they  condemned  me 
as  going  too  far  in  my  conclusions,  or  as  reasoning  too 
confidently  on  insufficient  premises — they  would  at  least 
have  recognised  that  my  arguments  were  not  altogether 
without  some  real  foundation,  and  ought  to  be  judged  upon 
their  merits,  ought  to  be  considered,  and,  if  need  be,  checked 
and  corrected,  not  merely  thrown  aside  with  contemptuous 
language,  as  unfounded  and  ridiculous.  I  could  not  have 
believed,  for  instance,  that  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  would  have 
ventured  to  say  that  my  '  speculations,  so  rash  and  feeble  in^ 
themselves,'  are  '  in  all  essential  points  but  the  repetition  of 
old  and  often-answered  cavils  against  the  Word  of  God,' 
and  still  less  that  his  Grace  the  Primate  of  All  England 
would  have  pronounced,  with  the  high  authority  of  his  office, 
that  my  objections  'are,  for  the  most  part,  puerile  and 
trite ;  so  puerile  that  an  intelligent  youth  who  read  his 
Bible  with  care,  could  draw  the  fitting  answers  from  the 
Bible  itself — so  trite  that  they  have  been  again  and  again 
refuted,  two  hundred  years  ago  by  Archbishop  Ussher,  one 
of  the  most  learned  analysts  of  this  or  of  any  country,  more 
recently  by  Bishop  Watson  and  others.' "  ^ 

If  nothing  more  was  needed  for  their  complete  refutation 
than  the  intelligence  of  an  average  youth  who  read  his  Bible 
carcfull)-,  the  great  learning  of  Archbishop  Ussher  must  have 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  xviii. 


458  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 


been  wasted  on  a  task  unworthy  of  his  powers.  But  not  one 
word  of  the  Primate's  statement  was  true  in  fact ;  and,  as  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  temperately  urged,  "  the  writings  of  Arch- 
bishop Ussher  and  Bishop  Watson  will  throw  no  light 
whatever  upon  the  most  important  questions  which  are  here 
discussed."  But,  in  truth.  Archbishop  Longley  allowed  him- 
self to  use  language  which,  if  employed  for  instance  in  the 
long  controversies  on  the  origin,  growth,  or  composition  of 
the  Homeric  poems,  would  have  covered  the  critic  with 
disgrace.  Not  content  with  expressing  his  contempt  for 
the  Bishop's  "  puerilities,"  he  ranged  the  readers  of  his 
book  into  three  ranks  or  categories — the  ignorant,  the 
half-informed,  and  those  who  rejoiced  "  in  anything  which 
can  free  them  from  the  troublesome  restraints  of  religion." 
This  is  one  of  those  vast  falsehoods  of  which  we  may  hope 
that  Archbishop  Longley,  were  he  Primate  still,  would  be  now 
ashamed.  But  the  Bishop,  now  as  always  unruffled,  replied 
simply  : — 

"  The  object  of  my  whole  book  is  to  bind  the  consciences  of 
men  more  imperatively  than  ever  by  the  law  of  true 
religion,  which  is  the  law  of  life  and  happiness.  But  inas- 
much as  multitudes  have  already  broken  loose  from  the 
restraints  of  that  traditional  teaching,  which  they  know  to 
be  contradicted  by  some  of  the  most  familiar  results  of 
modern  science,  now  made  the  common  heritage  of  every 
educated  English  child,  I  believe  that  I  have  only  done 
my  duty,  as  a  minister  of  the  National  Church,  in  endea- 
vouring to  re-establish  a  permanent  union  between  the 
teachings  of  religion  and  science,  and  to  heal  effectively 
that  breach  between  them,  which  otherwise  will  assuredly 
widen  day  by  day,  with  infinite  injury  to  the  Church  itself, 
and  to  the  whole  community. "  ^ 

But  again  and  again  the  Bishops  tried  to  divert  the  con- 
troversy to  false  issues.     They  would  have  it,  for  instance, 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  xviii. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.         459 

that  Dr.  Colenso  "  denied  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible."  He 
had  not  done  so,  and  indeed  he  had  not  in  these  volumes 
entered  into  the  question  at  all.  His  only  aim  had  been  "to 
examine  critically  the  Pentateuch  and  Book  of  Joshua,"  with 
the  special  purpose  of  determining,  as  far  as  possible,  the  age 
and  authorship  of  the  different  books.  They  insisted  further 
that  he  wished  to  prove  the  whole  Pentateuch,  and,  in  fact, 
the  whole  Bible,  to  be  untrue.  Nothing,  he  replied,  could  be 
further  from  his  wish  and  purpose. 

"  Rather,"  he  said,  "  I  desire  to  know  what  is  true  in  the 
Pentateuch  history,  and  in  the  Bible  generally.  I  wish  to 
know,  if  possible,  in  what  age,  by  what  persons,  under  what 
circumstances,  the  different  portions  of  the  Bible  were 
written,  that  I  may  be  able  to  judge  for  myself,  and  help 
others  to  judge,  the  amount  of  credibility  to  be  attached  to 
the  different  narratives The  process  of  critical  in- 
quiry, so  far  from  eliciting  proofs  and  confirmations  of  the 
Mosaic  origin  of  these  books,  leads  quite  to  the  opposite 
conclusion.  All  the  arguments  drawn  from  an  examination 
of  the  Pentateuch  point  in  one  direction.  It  is  well  to 
observe  this.  There  is  literally  nothing  in  these  books 
distinctly  indicative  of  Mosaic  authorship.  The  whole  force 
of  the  argument  for  that  authorship  rests  upon  tradition, 
and  may  be  referred  back  to  the  opinion  of  the  Jews  who 
lived  nearly  a  thousand  years  after  the  date  assigned  to 
Moses.  It  is  not  a  question  of  balanced  internal  evidence, 
but  a  case  where  there  is  a  host  of  indications  all  tending 
to  show  diversity  of  authorship  and  late  date,  and  none 
discoverable,  by  all  the  ingenuity  yet  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  subject,  which  tends  decidedly  the  other  way ;  and  the 
supporters  of  the  traditional  view  will  be  found  to  be  con- 
stantly occupied — not  in  producing  '  internal  evidence '  to 
show  that  Moses  did  write  the  Pentateuch,  but — in  trying 
to  account  for  the  existence,  on  the  assumption  of  his 
authorship,  of  so  much  internal  evidence  of  the  contrary. 
In   short,    the   strength   of  the  resistance    to   the    critical 


46o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

conclusion  lies  in  the  feeling  that  we  do  not  like  to  think 
that  those  books  could  have  grown  up  in  the  way  which  the 
'  internal  evidence  '  clearly  indicates, — the  way  in  which,  be 
it  observed,  the  religious  books  of  all  other  nations  are 
known  to  have  been  formed." 
"  I  have  felt  it  to  be  my  duty,"  he  went  on  to  say,  "  to  lay  the 

facts  of  the  case  before  the  English  reader I  believe 

that  I  have  succeeded  in  this  to  some  extent,  though  I  must 
confess  that  I  have  been  surprised  at  the  amount  of  ingenuity 
which,  even  in  an  age  like  this,  can  still  be  expended  in 
framing  all  kinds  of  possible  or  impossible  ways  of  escape 
from  the  most  overwhelming  difficulties." 

Further  than  this,  the  Bishops  charged  him  with  imputing 
dishonesty  to  the  clergy  generally  for  concealing  their  views 
about  the  Deluge,  and  using  the  Baptismal  Form  of  Prayer 
without  believing  it.  The  charge  was  not  true  ;  and  if  any 
words  used  by  him  could  fairly  be  made  to  express  this 
meaning,  he  would,  he  said,  have  regretted  and  apologized  for 
the  use  of  language  capable  of  being  so  misconstrued.^  He 
had  acted  simply  in  self-defence.  Accused  of  dishonesty 
himself,  in  retaining  his  clerical  office  while  disbelieving 
many  or  most  of  the  details  of  the  story  of  the  Exodus,  he 
replied 

"  that  Wyclif  did  not  retire  from  his  sacred  office,  though 
disbelieving  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  which  he  was  a 
minister  ;  and  that  Cranmer,  Ridley  and  Latimer,  and 
other  Bishops,  though  consecrated  as  Bishops  of  the  Roman 
Church,  and  bound  by  the  solemn  vows  of  their  ordination 
in  that  Church,  did  not  resign  their  sees  as  soon  as  they 
became  Protestant  Bishops,  and  the  National  Church  by 
the  national  will  had  become  Protestant  also  ;  nor  after- 
wards, when,  by  the  same  will,  the  Church  ceased  to  be 
Protestant,  and  once  more  became  Romanised.  But  I  felt 
that  in  the  present  instance  there  was  far  less  reason  for 
urging  upon  me  such  a  course  as  a  plain  duty,  inasmuch  as 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  xxi. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.         461 

very  many  of  the  clergy,  I  believed,  and  certainly  not  a  few 
of  my  episcopal  brethren,  did  7iot  accept  the  story  of  the 
Noachian  deluge  as  literally  and  historically  true,  and  yet 
justified  themselves  in  retaining  their  offices  in  the  Church. 
If  my  conduct  was  dishonest,  so,  too,  was  theirs  ;  for  my 
'  dishonesty,'  surely,  could  not  consist  in  openly  professing 
that  which  others  secretly  held."  ^ 

Far,  however,  from  imputing  dishonesty  to  them,  he  gave 
certain  reasons  which  he  thought  would  satisfy  different 
classes  of  minds,  and  enable  them  still  with  a  clear 
conscience  to  use  the  form  of  prayer  which  referred  to  that 
narrative. 

But  the  disingenuousness  of  the  great  majority  of  the 
prelates  of  the  Church  of  England  was  shown  still  more 
glaringly  in  the  joint  letter  which  they  addressed  to  the 
Bishop  of  Natal,  calling  upon  him  to  resign.^  They  were 
well  aware  that  the  position  of  the  clergy  in  England  had 
been  much  affected  by  recent  decisions  of  the  Court  of  Arches 
and  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council,  and  that 
the  effect  of  these  judgements  was  greatly  to  extend  the 
range  of  their  freedom.  Of  some  of  these  facts  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  could  not  be  aware  at  the  time  of  writing  some  of  the 
sentences  on  which  the  prelates  fastened  ;  but  they  proceeded, 
nevertheless,  to  judge  him  out  of  his  own  mouth,  without 
betraying  any  consciousness  that  the  circumstances  of  the 
case  were  no  longer  what  they  had  been. 

"(i)  We  understand  you  to  say,"  they  wrote,  "  that  you  do 
not  now  believe  that  which  you  voluntarily  professed  to 
believe  as  the  indispensable  condition  of  your  being  intrusted 
with  your  present  office. 

"  (2)  We  understand  you  to  say  that  you  have  entertained, 
and  have  not  abandoned,  the  conviction  that  you  could 
not  use  the  Ordination  Service,  inasmuch  as  in  it  you  must 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  xxiii.  -  See  p.  236. 


462  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

require  from  others  a  solemn  declaration  that  they  '  un- 
feigneclly  believe  all  the  canonical  Scriptures  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments,'  which,  with  the  evidence  now  before 
you,  it  is  impossible  wholly  to  believe  in. 
"  (3)  Wc  understand  you  further  to  intimate  that  those  who 
think  with  you  are  precluded  from  using  the  Baptismal 
Service,  and  consequently  (as  we  must  infer)  other  offices 
of  the  Prayer  Book,  unless  they  omit  all  such  passages  as 
assume  the  truth  of  the  Mosaic  history." 

The  comments  added  to  these  three  suppositions  show  that 
they  were  meant  to  serve  as  nooses  to  catch  an  unwary 
victim.  How  different  the  comments  might  have  been,  and 
how  different  the  results  following  from  those  comments,  the 
Bishops  were  not  aware.  Their  words  had  not  ascribed  to 
the  Bishop  of  Natal  any  definite  offence,  or  shown  that  these 
three  headings  involved  any  offence  at  all.  They  do  not  state 
what  it  was  that  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had,  at  the  time  of  his 
ordination,  voluntarily  professed  to  believe  ;  and  it  did  not  of 
necessity  follow  that,  in  believing  this,  whatever  it  may  have 
been,  he  was  right.  The  fact  is  that  he  was  not  right,  and 
one  at  least  of  the  English  Bishops,  Dr.  Thirlwall,  of  St. 
David's,  felt  that  he  had  not  been  right.  Had  all  of  them 
seen  things  as  Bishop  Thirlwall  saw  them,  their  comments 
would  have  taken  probably  the  following  form  : — 

We  understand  you  to  say  that  you  no  longer  hold  a  certain 
belief  which  you  held  at  the  time  of  your  ordination  ;  and 
from  your  writings  we  gather  that  you  felt  yourself  bound 
by  this  belief  to  accept  every  single  incident  in  the  narra- 
tives of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  as  historical  fact.  We  are 
thankful  to  be  able  to  disabuse  you  of  a  mistaken  notion, 
and  to  assure  you  that  in  accusing  yourself  of  failure  in 
duty  by  abandoning  this  notion  you  were  led  astray  by  an 
over-sensitive  and  scrupulous  conscience.  Your  error  lay 
in  the  old  belief  or  idea,  not  in  the  abandonment  of  it. 
We  are  aware  that  such  ideas  are  still  entertained'  by  some 


1 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLE  NSC.  463 

amongst  both  the  clergy  and  the  laity ;  but  it  is  a  ground- 
less superstition.  The  Church  holds,  and  has  always  held, 
that  the  voice  of  God  may  be  heard  in  the  Scriptures  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  of  the  New  ;  but  it  has  never  said 
or  meant  that  they  should  be  treated  as  though  the  narra- 
tives found  in  them  were  all  genuine  history,  or  as  though 
the  prophets  and  righteous  men  whose  words  we  read  in 
them  were  guaranteed  against  all  mistakes  and  errors.  If 
we  have  at  any  time  so  spoken  as  to  countenance  this 
popular  delusion,  we  take  blame  to  ourselves  ;  and  we 
welcome  your  work  as  showing  clearly  how  the  Scriptures 
should  be  studied,  and  as  helping  the  people  to  realise  more 
fully  the  real  nature  of  the  Divine  Kingdom  and  the  Divine 
work  in  the  world. 

These  things  might  have  been,  and  should  have  been,  said  ; 
but  we  have  to  come  down  to  hard  facts. 

The  Bishop's  answers  to  these  inferences  or  assumptions 
are  so  important  that  they  must  be  cited  almost  in  full.  He 
had  to  reply  to  one  of  the  craftiest  documents  that  ever  came 
from  a  body  of  hierophants  conscious  that  the  popular  faith 
in  their  own  authority  was  being  assailed  and  shaken.  They 
were  trying  to  pin  an  honourable  and  single-minded  man  to 
his  own  words  in  a  sense  which  might,  as  they  hoped,  constrain 
him  to  withdraw  from  the  struggle,  and  leave  them  masters 
of  the  field.  They  were  careful  at  the  same  time  so  to  lay 
their  snare  as  to  impart  the  semblance  of  a  judicial  authority 
to  their  interpretations  of  the  promises  made  at  ordination 
and  consecration.  They  juggled  (the  word  cannot  be  with- 
held) with  their  phrases,  when  they  said  that  the  Bishop  had 
to  obtain  from  candidates  for  orders  a  declaration  that  they 
"  believe  the  canonical  Scriptures "  which  now  he  found  it 
impossible  to  believe  in.  Christians,  and,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  all 
men,  believe  in  God  alone :  to  other  things  they  may  give 
credit,  they  can  do  no  more.  But  the  Bishops  vvere  insinuat- 
ing throughout  that  the  acceptance  of  an  immense  number  of 


464  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

incidents  of  all  sorts  and  kinds  as  historical  events  was  the 
most  important  condition  imposed  on  candidates  for  orders, 
so  that  when  in  the  daily  office  the  priest  declares  the  forgive- 
ness of  sin  for  all  who  unfeignedly  believe  the  Holy  Gospel, 
this  means  not  so  much  the  thankful  welcome  of  the  message 
of  healing,  strength,  peace,  and  love,  as  the  receiving  without 
question  as  genuine  historical  events  every  incident  in  the 
narratives  relating  to  the  Nativity  or  the  Passion.  By  speaking 
of  certain  prayers  in  the  offices  of  the  Church  of  England  as 
assuming  the  truth  of  the  Mosaic  history,  and  insinuating  on 
this  ground  that  an  acceptance  of  every  incident  in  that 
history  as  actual  fact  was  imposed  as  a  sacred  duty  on  all 
the  clergy,  they  were  making  a  demand  still  more  monstrous, 
and  were  doing  their  best  to  choke  the  spiritual  life  of  the 
country.  When,  as  a  candidate  for  orders,  Mr.  Maurice  was 
asked  what  were  the  erroneous  and  strange  doctrines  which 
he  undertook  to  banish  and  put  away,  he  specified  among 
others  the  doctrines  that  there  is  any  goodness  in  the  creature 
disunited  from  God  ;  that  there  is  any  bar  to  the  admission 
of  a  sinner  into  God's  presence,  except  that  which  his  own 
unbelief  creates  ;  that  men  are  more  anxious  to  attain  the 
knowledge  of  God  than  He  is  anxious  to  bring  them  to  that 
knowledge  ;  that  man  can  worship  God  except  in  the  Spirit  ; 
and  that  there  is  any  reward  so  great  or  glorious  which  God 
can  offer  to  His  creatures  as  that  of  making  them  partakers  of 
His  Divine  character.  These  are  truths  or  realities  on  which 
men  can  live,  without  which  they  cannot  live  ;  and  yet  the 
prelates  could  speak  as  though  their  own  minds  and  those  of 
their  clergy  were,  or  ought  to  be,  running  at  least  equally  on 
the  duty  of  believing  that  historically  the  ass  of  Balaam  spoke 
with  articulate  human  speech,  or  that  Samson  smote  a  thou- 
sand Philistines  with  an  ass's  jaw-bone.  The  very  thought  of 
such  superstition  is  to  the  last  degree  humiliating ;  and  it 
was  a  happy  thing  for  the  future  history  of  English  thought 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  465 

that    the    Bishop    of   Natal    avoided    the    trap    thus   laid   for 
him. 

As  to  the  first  of  the  three  assumptions  made  by  the 
prelates  who  addressed  him,  he  said  that  at  the  time  of  his 
ordination  he  understood  the  words  "  believe  unfeignedly  all 
the  canonical  Scriptures  " 

"  in  their  obvious  and  most  natural  sense, — the  sense  in  which 
some  of  the  Bishops  and  many  of  the  clergy  at  this  very 
time  receive  them, — as  implying  that  those  Scriptures  were, 
in  matters  of  historical  fact,  as  well  as  in  statements  of  moral 
and  religious  truth,  divinely  and  infallibly  true." 

"  I  have  said  also,"  he  added,  "  that  I  had  ceased  to  believe 
this,  and  that  I  was  pained  to  find  my  convictions  contra-  y 
dieting,  as  I  conceived,  the  words  of  the  Ordination  Service) 
until  it  was  declared,  on  the  highest  legal  authority  of  the 
Church  of  England,  that  my  former  view — I  may  say  the 
popular  view — of  the  meaning  of  those  words  was  mistaken, 
and  that  they  must  be  held  to  mean  no  more  than  a  simple 
expression  of  a  bond  fide  belief  that  '  the  Holy  Scriptures 
contain  everything  necessary  to  salvation,'  and  that,  '  to  that 
extent,  they  have  the  direct  sanction  of  the  Almighty.'  " 

On  the  second  of  their  remarks  he  reminded  them  that, 
although  he  had  at  one  time 

"  felt  the  impossibility  of  demanding  from  a  candidate  for 
orders  such  a  confession  of  belief  in  the  Holy  Scriptures  as 
[he]  then  considered,  and  as  many  still  consider,  to  be 
required  by  the  formula  of  the  Ordination  Service," 

he  had  added,  since  reading  in  England  the  judgement  of  Dr. 
Lushington,  that  his  words  were  written  before  that  decision, 
which  had,  of  course,  materially  affected  his  conclusion. 
Of  their  third  assumption  he  said  that  it 

"is  contradicted   by  my  own   language    already    referred   to 
(Part  n.  p.  xxii.),  where  I  have  said  that  many  clergymen 
VOL.   I.  H  H 


466  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

who  do  not  believe  in  the  historical  truth  of  the  Noachian 
Deluge  will  yet  be  able  to  justify  themselves,  in  one  of  two 
ways,  in  using  still  such  a  form  of  prayer.  If  it  is  perfectly 
understood  that  a  minister  is  at  full  liberty  to  explain  to 
his  people  freely  his  opinion  respecting  the  Biblical  account 
of  the  Deluge,  the  unhistorical  character  of  the  Mosaic  story, 
or  the  age  and  authorshipof  Deuteronomy  (and  this  appears 
likewise  to  be  decided  in  the  affirmative  by  the  same  legal 
judgement),  I  apprehend  that  many  who  have  an  intelligent 
acquaintance  with  the  results  of  modern  criticism,  may  still 
be  content  to  read  the  allusions  in  the  Liturgy.  But  I  felt 
also  that  there  might  be  others,  of  more  scrupulous  con- 
science, who  would  not  be  satisfied  with  this  mode  of  meet- 
ing the  difficuly,  and  to  whom  I  could  give  no  other  advice 
than  that  which  I  have  given — viz.  to  07nit  such  expressions, 
and  take  the  consequences  of  such  omission.  I  consider, 
however,  that  such  passages  ought  no  longer  to  be  retained, 
as  of  absolute  obligation,  in  our  Prayer  Book  ;  and  I  hold  it 
to  be  my  duty,  as  a  Bishop  of  the  National  Church,  to 
labour  for  their  removal — or,  at  least,  for  the  liberty  being 
granted  of  omitting  them — as  soon  as  possible."  ^ 

In  giving  this  advice  the  Bishop  was,  as  it  so  happened, 
fully  borne  out  by  the  Primate,  Dr.  Longley.-  To  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  this  support  was  satisfactory,  and  in  a  certain  sense 
it  was  eminently  so  ;  but  there  was,  nevertheless,  this  differ- 
ence, that,  at  the  worst,  the  using  of  the  words  in  the  Burial 
Service  over  the  remains  of  those  who  had  lived  unworthily, 
or  shockingly,  would  but  express  trust  in  a  love  stronger  than 
spiritual  death,  trust  in  a  righteousness  which  will  make  each 
undergo  the  discipline  which  they  have  deserved  and  which 
they  need,  trust  in  a  will  which  is  eternally  at  war  with  evil,  and 
which  will  remove  and  destroy  it  in  the  end.  By  the  advice 
which  he  gave,  Archbishop  Longley  was  virtually  expressing 
distrust  in  this  Almighty  love  and  this  righteousness  ;  by  his 

^  Pentateuch^  Part  III.  p.  xxvi.  -  See  p.  326. 


\ 


1865.  THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.         467 

counsel  to  clergymen  in  perplexity  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was 
affirming  it. 

But  the  Bishop  was  the  last  person  to  say  or  to  think  that 
the  course  which  he  took  or  the  position  which  he  occupied 
must  in  every  instance  be  right.  As  against  the  prelates, 
who,  if  they  were  to  be  judged  exclusively  by  the  words  of 
their  letter,  seemed  dead  to  all  spiritual  perceptions,  he  was 
perfectly  right.  The  extravagant  views  or  fancies  which  were 
fast  becoming  an  incubus  on  the  thought  of  the  country  made 
his  challenge  indispensably  necessary ;  but  apart  from  these 
absurdities  it  would  have  been  less  urgently  called  for.  Dean 
Stanley  was  one  of  those  who  would  put  all  these  follies  out 
of  sight  and  keep  them  out  of  his  mind,  and  if  this  could 
always  have  been  done  by  all,  it  might  perhaps  have  been  a 
gain  for  Christendom.  For  those  who  can  throw  themselves 
into  his  mode  of  thought,  questions  of  historical  credibility 
become,  in  reference  to  the  province  of  faith,  matters  of 
supreme  insignificance  and  indifference.  If  some  portions 
of  the  offices  of  the  Church  of  England  make  mention  of 
the  Noachian  flood,  and  the  passage  of  the  Red  Sea,  of  the 
marriage  of  Abraham  and  Sara,  of  Isaac  and  Rebekah,  all 
these  are  merely  illustrations  of  the  Divine  government  of 
the  world  or  of  the  Divine  love.  They  mean  nothing  else  ; 
and  apart  from  this  significance  the  incidents  themselves 
become  mere  chaff,  husks,  'and  straw,  lacking  utterly  all 
nourishing  power.  If  these  illustrations  fail,  millions  more 
are  forthcoming.  It  was  Mr.  Maurice's  special  fallacy  that, 
without  the  narrative  of  the  Exodus,  the  truth  that  God  is  a 
deliverer  from  bondage  and  tyranny  could  not  be  brought 
home  to  the  hearts  of  men. 

Regarded  in  this  light,  all  so-called  historical  difficulties 
may  be  said  with  truth  not  so  much  to  be  solved  as  to  fade 
away.  In  another  channel  the  history  of  Christianity  has 
been  the  history  of  the  petrifaction  of  spiritual  life  into  a  set 

H  II  2 


468  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

of  outward  symbols,  wh  ich  are  supposed  to  point  to  historical 
incidents ;  and  its  future  history  must  be  the  history  of 
dehverance  from  this  house  of  bondage.  In  the  words  of  an 
eminent  layman  : — 

"  Such  terms  as  forgiveness,  reconciliation,  and  salvation, 
instead  of  representing  experiences  of  the  believer — 
processes  of  his  spiritual  life — came  to  represent  certain 
Divine  transactions,  in  which  the  believer  had  no  personal 
part,  though  through  faith  he  had  the  benefit  of  them  in  the 
acquisition  of  final  happiness.  The  death  and  resurrection 
of  Christ  ceased  to  be  looked  upon  as  perpetually  re-enacted 
in  the  surrender  of  the  fleshly  self,  and  the  substitution  for 
it  of  a  new  man  in  the  moral  life.  They  became  past 
events  by  which  certain  blessings  had  been  obtained  for  us, 
or  Divine  testimony  given  to  an  authority  claiming  our 
obedience." 

Against  this  falling  back,  which  was  also  a  falling  away, 
there  had  been  more  than  one  protest  already. 

"  Having  come  to  be  understood  as  no  more  than  an  accept- 
ance of  the  authority  of  the  Church  and  obedience  to  its 
rules,  faith  was  restored  by  Luther  to  the  meaning  of  an 
assurance  of  sonship  in  Christ,  founded  on  personal  ex- 
perience. This  was  so  far  a  gain  ;  but  it  did  not  carry  with 
it — most  Christians  would  have  said  that  it  would  have 
been  pernicious  if  it  had  carried  with  it — any  change  in  the 
view  of  man's  redemption  as  achieved  by  past  historical 
events.  The  death  and  resurrection  were  not  interpreted 
into  present  realities  within  the  experience  of  the  believ^er." 

With  reference  to  these  eternal  realities,  St.  Paul  ■ 

"  seemed  to  himself  to  die  daily,  and  rise  again  with  Christ, 
and  it  was  this  moral  and  personal  experience  that  gave 
reality  in  his  eyes  to  the  supposed  historical  events." 

But,  by  the  hardening  process  which  marks  the  dogmatic 
theology  of  the  Christian  Churches, 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  0.  469 

"  faith  is  regarded  as  necessarily  involving  the  behef  that 
propositions  asserting  the  actual  occurrences  of  these  events 
are  true.  The  saving  faith  on  which  Protestants  insist  is 
doubtless  held  to  imply  much  more  than  such  an  accept- 
ance of  certain  propositions  ;  but  though  much  more,  it 
cannot,  according  to  the  common  conception,  be  less  than 
this.  But  the  more  strongly  we  insist  that  faith  is  a  per- 
sonal and  conscious  relation  of  the  man  to  God,  .  .  .  the 
more  weakened  becomes  its  dependence  on  events  believed 
to  have  happened  in  the  past.  ...  It  is  not  on  any  estimate 
of  evidence,  correct  or  incorrect,  that  our  true  holiness  can 
depend.  Neither  if  we  believe  certain  documents  to  be 
genuine  and  authentic  can  we  be  the  better,  nor  if  we 
believe  it  not,  the  worse.  There  is  thus  an  inner  contra- 
diction in  that  conception  of  faith  which  makes  it  a  state 
of  mind  involving  peace  with  God  and  love  towards  all 
mankind,  and  at  the  same  time  makes  its  object  that 
historical  work  of  Christ  of  which  our  knowledge  depends 
on  evidence  of  uncertain  origin  and  value."  ^ 

From  the  serener  region  in  which  the  layman  is  free  to 
move  and  breathe,  we  are  drawn  down  to  the  heaver  air  of 
the  traditional  dogmatism  which  does  not  represent  the  true 
spirit  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  which  can  never  do 
more  than  give  a  stone  where  bread  is  asked  for.  It  is  a 
wretched  necessity  ;  but  the  language  of  his  opponents  left 
the  Bishop  no  alternative.  Well  might  he  ask  how,  if  the 
acceptance  of  the  old  Pentateuchal  or  other  narratives  as 
historical  was  the  Christian's  first  duty,  his  conduct  differed 
from  theirs  in  respect  of  honest  adherence  to  the  principles 

1  The  Witness  0/  God,  and  Faith,  two  lay  sermons,  1870,  1878.  By 
T.  H.  Green,  M.A.,  Whyte's  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford.     Pp.  59  and  68. 

I  make  no  apology  for  quoting  these  passages  from  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  sermons  written  within  the  life-time  of  any  now  living.  These 
two  sermons  were  preached  in  the  Chapel  of  Balliol  College.  Their 
importance,  as  showing  the  channel  into  which  the  deepest  religious 
thought  of  the  age  is  flowing,  can  scarcely  be  exaggerated. 


470  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

of  the  Church  of  England.  After  his  reply  to  the  letter  of 
the  prelates,  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  was  the  first  to  issue  a 
letter  of  inhibition,  and  mpst  of  the  other  Bishops  had  "  fol- 
lowed him  in  adopting  this  extraordinary  mode  of  public 
Church  censure,  upon  the  mere  judgement  of  each  individual 
Bishop,  without  any  hearing  or  trial  of  the  accused."  Before 
his  countrymen,  therefore,  he  put  to  the  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
as  the  guide  and  representative  of  his  colleagues,  this 
question  : — 

"  Does  he,  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  and  other  scientific  Societies, 
believe  unfeigncdly  in  the  literal  historical  truth  of  the 
account  of  the  Creation,  the  Noachian  Deluge,  or  the 
numbers  of  the  Exodus  }  .  .  .  If  he  does  not,  then  how, 
I  repeat,  does  his  present  conduct  differ  essentially  from 
mine  ?  He  has  some  way  of  explaining  these  matters, 
which  satisfies  his  own  mind,  as  I  have.  And  the  only 
difference  is  this,  that  I  think  it  to  be  my  duty,  and  shall 
make  it  my  practice,  to  tell  my  people  plainly,  on  such 
points,  what  I  believe,  and  what  I  know  to  be  true  ;  and 
the  Bishop  of  Oxford  has  not  yet,  as  far  as  I  am  aware, 
thought  it  necessary  to  say  what  he  really  thinks  upon  any 
one  of  these  subjects." 

It  was  indeed  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  ascertain  what 
Bishop  Wilberforce  and  his  colleagues  did  believe  as  to  this 
matter.  They  had  expressed  themselves  in  strong  terms  as 
"  resting  their  hopes  of  eternity  on  the  Word  of  God."  "  But 
that,"  the  Bishop  remarks,  "  I  trust  I  do  as  truly  and  entirely 
as  they."  What,  however,  is  the  Word  of  God,  which,  in  the 
language  of  the  first  Homily,  is  "contained  in  Holy  Scrip- 
ture "  ?  The  question  was  answered  by  Dean  Milman  in 
these  few  plain  words : — 

"  The  moral  and  religious  truth,  a7id  this  alone,  I  apprehend, 
is  the  Word  of  God,  contained  in  the  sacred  writings.  I 
know  no  passage  in  which  this  emphatic  term  is  applied  to 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.         471 

any  sentence  or  saying  which  docs  not  convey  or  inforce 
such  truth." 

To  the  Dean's  words  the  language  of  the  Bishops  presented 
a  pitiable  contrast ;  but  the  qualifications  and  reservations 
which  underlay  their  professed  unanimity  call  for  a  harder 
term.     On  the  one  side  was  the  assertion  that 

"the  very  foundation  of  our  faith,  our  nearest  and  dearest 
consolations,  are  taken  from  us,  if  one  line  of  that  Sacred 
Book  be  declared  to  be  unfaithful  and  untrustworthy." 

On  the  other  hand  there  was  the  assurance  that 

"every  line  of  Scripture  will  amply  bear  the  pressure  of  any 
test  applied  to  it,  if  viewed  with  relation  to  the  subject  it 
really  refers  to,  the  state  mentally  and  morally  of  those  to 
whom  it  was  addressed,  and  the  effect  it  was  intended 
to  convey." 

Probably  nowhere,  certainly  not  among  Mahometans,  or 
Brahmans,  or  Buddhists,  could  a  more  barefaced  method  be 
propounded  for  the  easy  covering  of  every  difficulty,  for 
establishing  any  preconceived  conclusion,  and  for  making 
anything  mean  anything. 

Of  the  value  of  the  results  which  this  method  might  be 
made  to  yield  Dr.  Pusey  had  never  a  moment's  doubt.  It 
would  meet  all  objections  urged  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  or 
by  any  one  else,  as  fast  as  they  were  made.  The  Bishop 
might  appeal  to  Galileo,  as  one  who  upset  the  Mosaic  account 
of  the  Creation.  The  appeal  was  irrelevant.  It  was  wrong 
to  condemn  Galileo.  The  Book  of  Genesis  really  said  only 
what  Galileo  said.  It  never  was  of  faith  {dc  fide)  to  hold 
that  the  earth  stands  still  while  the  sun  moves.  It  was 
simply  a  wrong  interpretation  ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of 
every  other  question.  The  language  of  the  books  in  the 
Bible    may  seem  to   assert  or   to    imply   that   the   earth    is 


472  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

a  flat  plane,  with  a  solid  heaven  stretched  over  it,  which 
God  may  bow  to  touch  the  mountains  and  make  them 
smoke.  The  words  of  St.  Paul  may  seem  to  speak  of  all 
men  as  rising  together  at  the  end  of  the  world  from  a  plane 
surface  to  a  common  centre  in  the  air.  The  Psalmists  may 
seem  to  speak  of  an  earth  which  cannot  be  moved.  But  the 
appearances  are  all  delusive.  What  they  really  set  forth 
is  the  Copernican  astronomy,  which  the  accusers  of  Galileo 
most  culpably  failed  to  discover  in  its  pages.  What  if  it  be, 
as  the  Bishop  of  Natal  urged,  a  scientific  fact  that  the  universe 
existed  for  unimaginable  ages  before  man  walked  the  earth  .■' 
This  may  have  been  puzzling  once,  but  why  should  it  cause 
any  difficulty  now .-'  Is  there  not  a  great  cJiasm  between  the 
verse,  "In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the 
earth,"  and  "  The  earth  was  waste  and  desolate "  ?  It  is 
strange,  perhaps,  that  no  one  should  have  thought  of  this 
before  ;  but  then  "  we  had,"  Dr.  Pusey  replied,  "  no  occasion 
to  think  of  a  gap  which  we  had  no  data  to  fill  up."  Dr. 
Buckland  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell  have  supplied  the  data,  and 
the  gap  is  found.  There  is  nothing  more  to  be  done.  It  is, 
he  insisted, 

"  absolutely  certain  that  the  Bible  does  not  say  that  the  earth 
was  created  at  any  definite  past  time,  and  that  between  its 
original  creation  mentioned  in  verse  i  and  man's  creation 
there  is  room,  if  need  be,  for  time  countless  by  man." 

If  any  are  so  unrighteous  as  to  think  that  Dr.  Pusey's 
chasm  does  not  much  mend  the  matter,  inasmuch  as  the  first 
verse  is  followed  by  a  consecutive  history  which  places  the 
creation  of  the  sun  and  moon  at  a  later  stage  than  that  of 
the  earth,  we  must  suppose  that  more  gaps  will  be  found 
which  carnal  sight  is  too  dull  to  espy.  So  with  the  Deluge. 
If  some  ask  how  the  wingless  birds  of  New  Zealand  or 
Australia  came  into   the  ark,  the  answer  is  that  they  never 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  473 

came  at  all,  and  that  God  created  them  afresh  when  the 
waters  had  subsided.  If  anyone  be  perplexed  by  the  chrono- 
logy of  the  Noachian  genealogies,  the  doubt  is  knocked  on 
the  head  by  the  answer  that  God  did  not  mean  them  to  be 
"exact  measures  of  man's  existence  on  the  earth."  If, 
according  to  Augustine,  God  has  a  right  to  doom  to  endless 
agonies  the  infant  of  an  hour  old  who  dies  unbaptized,  has 
He  not  also  the  right  of  setting  forth  a  pictorial  chronology  .■' 
Dr.  Pusey  could  not  see  the  possibility  of  doubting  this. 

"  St.  Matthew,"  he  insisted,  "  omitted  purposely  in  one  place 
some  names,  in  others,  others  ;  and  used  the  word  beget  of 

the  grandfather  or  of  the  grandfather's  grandfather 

Since,  then,  St.  Matthew  employed  fourteen,  not  as  an  actual 
number,  but  probably  as  a  symbolical  number,  we  need  not 
say  positively  that  Moses  did  not  in  like  way  employ  ten, 
as  it  often  seems  to  be  used,  as  a  mysterious  number,  signi- 
ficant of  completeness,  and  the  word  beget  of  the  grandfather, 
as  St.  Matthew  did." 

From  reasoning  such  as  this  it  would  seem  to  follow  that 
one  falsehood  is  rendered  historical  by  adducing  the  parallel 
of  another  falsehood.  Of  one  thing  only  can  we  be  assured. 
The  Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew,  as  we  have  it,  says  that 
from  Abraham  to  David  tJiere  are  fourteen  generations :  what 
the  writer  really  meant,  it  seems,  is  that  there  were  a  good 
many  more  than  fourteen,  but  that  his  symmetrical  chronology 
made  it  inconvenient  to  mention  them. 

If  we  can  speak  seriously  of  this  astounding  method  of 
adaptation,  should  we  not  say  that  Dr.  Pusey  deserved  the 
gratitude  of  all  who  have  Sacred  Books,  the  statements  of 
which  seem  to  need  manipulation  in  order  to  bring  them  into 
harmony  with  scientific  or  historical  facts  ?  But  miserable  as 
all  this  shuffling  may  be,  it  is  somewhat  less  repulsive  than 
the  brazen  hypothesis  which  would  uphold  the  credit  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  by  charging  God  Himself  with  falsehood. 


474  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

According  to  this  hypothesis,  the  whole  existence  of  man  on 
the  earth  to  the  present  time,  has  not  exceeded  six  millen- 
niums ;  and  the  earth's  strata  point  to  a  lapse  of  many 
myriads  of  years.  If  the  chalk  cliffs  had  never  grown  from 
the  first  at  a  more  rapid  rate  than  that  of  coral  reefs  and 
islands  now,  the  years  of  the  world  must  be  reckoned  almost 
by  millions.  But  all  these  appearances  are,  we  are  told, 
delusive,  and  were  purposely  caused  to  be  delusive.  God 
imparted  this  semblance  of  age  to  works  by  comparison  of 
yesterday,  in  order  to  confuse  the  human  mind,  and  humble 
the  pride  of  the  human  intellect.  This  is,  indeed,  to  make 
God  a  liar,  and  to  make  Him  such  for  the  express  purpose  of 
bewildering  and  misleading  His  creatures  ;  and  yet  some  who 
could  stoop  to  such  wretched  shifts  could  denounce  the  Bishop 
of  Natal  for  deliberate  impiety  for  saying  that  w^hen  Jesus 
spoke  of  Mosaic  books  or  of  the  Mosaic  law,  he  may  have 
only  shared  the  popular  opinion  of  the  day.  It  was,  per- 
haps, scarcely  necessary  that  the  controversy  thus  provoked 
should  have  been  raised  ;  and  on  the  whole  we  may  regret 
that  it  was  raised.  It  was  renewed  with  almost  more  than  its 
first  virulence  at  the  Capetown  trial  ;  and  it  may  be  that  the 
abuse  heaped  on  the  Bishop,  both  there  and  in  England, 
might  have  been  avoided,  by  insisting  simply  that  it  was 
impossible  for  Jesus  to  speak  otherwise  than  as  He  spoke.^ 
But  the  theological  hatred  had  been  fully  roused  by  the 
Bishop's  words.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  spoke  of 
them  as  "  derogatory  to  the  person,  the  attributes,  and  the 
work  of  our  Divine  Redeemer,"  and  as  "charging  Him  who 
knew  what  was  in  man,  with  ignorance  and  imposture."  The 
Archbishop  of  York  reproached  him  with  "having  imputed 
to  the  Lord  of  Glory  ignorance  of  holy  things,"  and  with 
*'  having  described  our  Lord  as  a  blind  guide,  quoting  for  the 
very  bread  of  life  the  baseless  fables  of  men."  One  prelate 
^  See  p.  307,  note.  , 


1 865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  \'js 

only,  the  courageous  and  judicially-minded  Bishop  of  St. 
David's,  came  forward  to  say  that  this  was  not  a  question  of 
holy  things  at  all,  and  that,  if  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was  on  this 
point  in  error,  the  error  was  shared  by  Jeremy  Taylor.-^  But, 
in  truth,  the  notion  which  the  two  Archbishops  seemed  to 
regard  as  indispensable  to  soundness  in  the  Christian  faith 
was  practically  unknown  to  the  Ante-Nicene  Church. 
Athanasius  himself  had  said  plainly  that  "  as,  on  becoming 
man.  He  hungers  and  thirsts  and  suffers  with  men,  so 
with  men,  as  man,  He  knows  not!'  Of  this  language  Dr. 
Pusey  was  constrained  to  say  that  it  certainly  seems  to 
impute  ignorance  to  our  Lord  as  man.  To  Cyril  it  was 
evidence  of  His  love,  that  He  could  "  bring  Himself  dow^n  to 
so  great  humiliation  as  to  bear  all  things  that  are  ours,  one  of 
which  also  is  ignovancer  The  utterances  of  Chrysostom  and 
Augustine  are  not  less  explicit ;  nor  is  Jeremy  Taylor  the 
only  theologian  of  more  recent  times  who  has  entertained  the 
same  opinion.  The  words  of  Hammond,  Lightfoot,  and  many 
others,  are  cited  in  an  admirable  letter  addressed  by  Mr. 
Houghton  to  the  Bishop,  and  inserted  by  the  latter  in  the 
preface  to  the  Third  Part  of  his  book  on  the  Pentateuch.  The 
Bishop  felt  deeply  the  sincerity  and  courage  shown  by  Mr. 
Houghton  in  thus  coming  forward  in  a  controversy  in  which 
he  had  at  first  taken  the  opposite  side.  Mr.  Houghton  had 
published  a  pamphlet  in  reply  to  Part  I.  ;  but  before  he  wrote 
his  letter  he  had  withdrawn  that  reply  from  circulation.  It 
was  impossible  for  him  to  deny  that  "  the  Bible  and  science 
were  opposed  to  each  other."  A  four  years'  examination  of 
almost  every  word  in  the  Bible  relating  to  natural  history 
had  convinced  him  that 

"  in  many  and  essential  points,  the  Biblical  and  natural  records 
are,  to  use  the  words  of  the  learned  and  candid  Kalisch, 
utterly  and  irreconcilably  at  variance." 
^  See  p.  309. 


476  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

It  was,  therefore,  absurd  to  speak  of  the  Bible  as  being  in- 
faUible  in  the  sense  in  which  the  popular  creed  assumes  it  to 
be  ;  but  Mr.  Houghton  was  sure,  nevertheless,  that  it  contained 
"  a  jewel  of  heavenly  lustre  and  of  priceless  value,"  and  that  it 
was  madness  in  men  to  refuse  to  drink  of  the  water  of  life 
because  it  was  offered  to  them  in  an  earthen  vessel. 

From  these  manly  and  wholesome  utterances  it  is,  in  truth, 
depressing  to  return  to  the  Report  of  the  Committee  of  the  Con- 
vocation of  the  Province  of  Canterbury  appointed  to  examine 
the  first  two  parts  of  the  Bishop's  work.^  Of  this  Committee, 
Archdeacon  Denison,  who  had  moved  for  it,  was  the  chair- 
man ;  but  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  paramount  influence  was  that 
of  Bishop  Wilberforce,  whose  own  convictions  as  to  the  his- 
torical value  of  the  Old  Testament  records  it  was  then,  as  it 
is  still,  impossible  to  ascertain.  It  was  Bishop  Wilberforce 
who  had  striven  to  impress  upon  the  nation  the  duty  of  taking 
a  signal  vengeance  on  the  Indian  mutineers.  It  was  his 
crusading  zeal  which  now  led  his  followers  to  break  the 
bounds  of  all  decent  moderation.  Whether  among  these 
Archdeacon  Denison  was  to  be  reckoned,  it  might  be  rash 
to  say.  He  might  be  acting  as  a  fellow-leader,  when,  having 
expressed  a  wish  to  "  avoid  the  appearance  of  approaching  to 
intemperance  in  thought  and  language,"  he  confined  himself 
to  speaking  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  as  "  a  sacrilegious  person," 
as  one  ready  to  "  damage  the  Bible  by  misrepresentation,  to 
tear  out  its  leaves,  mutilate  it,  and  desecrate  what  is  left." 

"  I  am  going  to  say,"  he  added,  "  if  any  man  asserts  such 
things  as  are  asserted  in  this  book,  ^  AnatJiema  esto  !  Let 
him  be  put  away.' " 

Nor  was  this  enough  to  satisfy  his  sense  of  fairness.  Pie, 
a  judge,  addressing   himself  to  judges,  who  were   about  to 

1  See  p.  303. 


1865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  477 

examine  and  pronounce  on  the  merits  or  demerits  of  a  given 
book,  could  have  the  triple  brass  to  say — 

"  I  have  no  doubt — at  all  events,  I  hope — that  there  are  many 
here  who  have  not  read  the  First  Part,  and  I  am  sure  that 
there  are  many  who  have  not  read  the  Second  Part," 

of  the  work  on  which  they  were  about  to  pass  sentence.  Such 
was  the  justice  of  English  ecclesiastics  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  a  justice  which  might  seem  to  be 
borrowed  from  Archbishop  Laud  and  his  colleagues  in  the 
seventeenth.  But  it  had  a  strange  look,  as  being  exhibited 
to  the  world  after  the  decision  of  Dr.  Lushington  in  the  pro- 
secution connected  with  the  volume  of  Essays  and  Revieivs. 
On  three  points  the  terms  of  this  decision  were  broadened  by 
the  final  ruling  of  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council. 
In  other  respects  it  was  unchallenged,  and  remains  the  law  of 
the  Church  of  England.  Dr.  Lushington's  judgement  was 
rejected  with  contempt  at  the  so-called  trial  of  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  by  the  Metropolitan  of  Southern  Africa ;  but  it  is 
for  all  who  have  not,  like  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  South 
Africa,  bartered  away  their  rights,  a  safeguard  for  the  liberties 
of  the  Church  of  England.  It  rests  on  the  principle  that  the 
judge  is  not  to  travel  away  from  the  Articles  and  formularies, 
either  to  the  decrees  of  Councils  or  to  passages  of  Holy  Scrip- 
ture, of  which  it  would  become  necessary  that  the  judge  should 
be  the  interpreter. 

Dr.  Lushington's  comment^  is  almost  more  important 
than  his  ruling.  All  liberty  carries  with  it  its  own  especial 
danger ;  and  the  man  who  acts  or  speaks  as  though  all  things 
were  expedient  for  him  because  they  were  lawful  must  be  as 
strangely  wanting  in  charity  as  in  discretion.  The  office  of 
the  Christian  priest  or  teacher  is  to  guide,  educate,  comfort, 
and  cheer  his  people.     Will  he  be  discharging  his  duty,  if  to 

^  See  p.  325. 


478  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

the  folk  of  a  country  parish  who  possess  perhaps  not  a  book 
beyond  the  Bible  he  bluntly  announces  that  Deuteronomy 
is  the  work  of  the  Prophet  Jeremiah,  or  that  the  belief  of  an 
immediately  impending  Parousia  in  the  Apostolic  age  was  a 
delusion  ?  It  is  enough  that  the  clergy  are  as  free  as  the 
laity  in  the  Church  of  England  to  examine  and  criticise 
the  books  of  the  Bible  by  the  tests  applied  to  all  other 
books,  and  that  they  are  not  under  the  yoke  which  Bishop 
Wilberforce  and  Archdeacon  Denison  would  have  imposed 
upon  them. 

The  Report^  of  the  Committee  over  which  Archdeacon 
Denison  presided  is  in  many  respects  a  noteworthy  com- 
position. It  embodied  the  conclusions  reached  by  fourteen 
clergymen  after  an  inquiry  extended  over  nine  days.  These 
judges  might  wish  and  intend  to  be  truthful  and  impartial ; 
but  many  or  most  of  them  had  previously  expressed  them- 
selves in  terms  of  severe  censure  on  the  books,  and  "  could 
not  therefore,"  as  the  Bishop  of  Natal  rightly  supposed,  "  be 
likely  to  spare  any  traces  of  heresy  which  might  fairly  be 
detected  in  them."  But  in  spite  of  this  the  Committee  did 
not  report  that  his  criticisms  were  unfounded,  or  his  critical 
conclusions  false.  They  impeached  not  the  scientific  truth, 
but  only  the  orthodoxy  of  his  reasonings.  In  the  words  of 
one  of  them,  they  had  simply  taken  expressions  from  the 
book,  and  "  placed  them  side  by  side  with  the  Bible  and 
expressions  from  the  formularies  and  Articles ; "  and  even 
with  the  large  license  so  assumed,  they  found  four  points 
only  in  which  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was  in  their  judgement 
guilty  of  having  transgressed  the  law  of  the  Church.  How 
these  points  were  dealt  with  by  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  we 
have  seen  already.^  It  was  strange  that  on  the  subject  of  the 
Divine  and  human  knowledge  of  Christ  the  Committee  should 
in  their  haste  to  condemn  the  Bishop  of  Natal  condemn  the 
^  See  p.  303.  ^  See  pp.  304-11. 


i865.         THE  ANTAGONISTS  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  479 

teaching  of  some  of  the  greatest  doctors  in  Christendom,  who 
had  either  avowed  conclusions  similar  to  those  which  had  been 
reached  by  Bishop  Colenso,  or  had  declared  that  others  were 
free  to  hold  them.  With  reference  to  these  opinions  of  Cyril, 
Athanasius,  and  other  theologians,  Dr.  Colenso  remarks  that 
it  is  surprising 

"  that  neither  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  nor  any  one  of  the 
Bishops  who  voted  with  him,  uttered  one  syllable  to  imply 
that  he  was  aware  of  any  such  passages  existing,  or  ex- 
pressed a  brotherly  hope  that  on  this  particular  point  at  all 
events,  I  might  not  be  altogether  so  guilty  as  some  sup- 
posed. It  is,  I  repeat,  an  amazing  fact,  that  so  many 
Bishops,  doctors,  and  divines,  should  have  adopted  this 
Report,  without  one  single  voice  breaking  the  dead  silence 
to  intimate  that  there  was  even  the  slightest  doubt  in  the 
Church  upon  this  question  ;  still  less  to  give  utterance  to 
the  simple  truth  that,  here  at  least,  I  am  supported  by  the 
consentient  opinion  of  very  many  of  the  greatest  divines, 
both  ancient  and  modern."  ^ 

A  legitimate,  if  not  the  only,  inference  is  that  they  wished 
to  keep  this  consentient  opinion  out  of  sight,  in  the  hope  that 
they  might  succeed  in  arrogating  the  authority  of  the  Church 
of  England  for  a  decision  which  would  have  for  its  effect  the 
exclusion  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  Their  policy  was  one  of 
treachery  to  the  English  Church,  involving  sooner  or  later  its 
downfall  and  ruin.  It  was  not  meant  to  be  such.  Of  any 
such  intention  they  may  be  most  thoroughly  acquitted  ;  but 
the  true  friends  of  an  institution  or  a  constitution  are  often 
not  those  who  are  loudest  in  protestations  of  their  zeal.  The 
Committee  of  Convocation  had  not  eyes  to  see  the  real 
bearing  of  their  own  words  and  acts,  or  the  real  mission  of 
the  Church  in  which  they  were  ministers.  This  mission  had 
been  well  set  forth  in  the  memorable  words  with  which  Dean 
1  Part  III.  p.  xlvi. 


48o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  ix. 

Milman  closed   his   long  and  arduous  toil    as    the    historian 
of  Latin   Christianity  : — 

"  As  it  is  my  own  confident  belief  that  the  words  of  Christ, 
and  His  words  alone  (the  primal,  indefeasible  truths  of 
Christianity),  shall  not  pass  away,  so  I  cannot  presume  to 
say  that  men  may  not  attain  to  a  clearer,  and  at  the  same 
time  more  full  and  comprehensive  and  balanced,  sense  of 
those  words  than  has  as  yet  been  generally  received  in  the 
Christian  world.  As  all  else  is  transient  and  unstable, 
these  only  eternal  and  universal,  assuredly,  whatever  light 
may  be  thrown  on  the  mental  constitution  of  man,  even  on 
the  constitution  of  Nature  and  the  laws  which  govern  the 
world,  will  be  concentered  so  as  to  give  a  more  penetrating 
vision  of  these  undying  truths."  J 

This  happy  consummation  can  be  brought  about  only  by  a 
readiness  to  receive  and  to  acknowledge  the  truth  of  facts, 
when  they  are  shown  to  be  true.  It  must  be  retarded  by  the 
exercise  of  authority  barring  the  way  to  impartial  and  un- 
prejudiced research,  on  the  books  included  in  the  Canon  of 
Scripture  as  on  any  others  ;  and  here  the  warning  of  Dean 
Milman  is  still  indispensably  necessary  : — 

"  If  on  such  subjects  some  solid  ground  be  not  found  on 
which  highly  educated,  reflective,  reading,  reasoning  men 
may  find  firm  footing,  I  can  foresee  nothing  but  a  wide, 
a  widening,  I  fear  an  impassable,  breach  between  the 
thought  and  religion  of  England.  A  comprehensive,  all- 
embracing.  Catholic  Christianity,  which  knows  what  is 
essential  to  religion,  what  is  temporary  and  extraneous  to 
it,  may  defy  the  world.  Obstinate  adherence  to  things 
antiquated,  and  irreconcilable  with  advancing  knowledge 
and  thought,  may  repel,  and  for  ever — how  many,  I  know 
not — how  far,  I  know  still  less.     Avertat  omen  Dens  I" 


CHAPTER   X. 

THE   PENTATEUCH  :      ITS   MATTER. 

Nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  has  passed  away  since 
Archbishop  Longley  was  pleased  to  pronounce  Bishop 
Colenso's  criticisms  on  the  Pentateuch  "  so  puerile  that  an 
intelligent  youth  who  read  his  Bible  with  care  could  draw  the 
fitting  answers  from  the  Bible  itself,"  and  so  trite  that  they 
have  been  threshed  out  and  refuted  again  and  again  during 
the  last  two  centuries.  The  two  statements  are  not  altogether 
consistent.  Mere  trivialities,  of  which  a  child  could  detect  the 
worthlessness,  could  scarcely  need  so  often  to  be  knocked  on 
the  head,  and  ought  scarcely  to  cause  so  much  excitement  or 
provoke  such  fierce  and  even  malignant  denunciations.  The 
value  of  Archbishop  Longley's  judgement  must  be  tested  by 
some  account  of  the  Bishop's  method  and  of  the  results 
attained  by  it.  If  the  Bishop  was  assaying  a  silly  and 
ridiculous  enterprise,  then  seldom,  if  ever,  has  an  unprofitable 
task  been  undertaken  with  such  single-hearted  devotion  to 
truth  and  with  so  steady  a  resolution  to  surrender  everything 
else,  if  need  be,  for  the  sake  of  it. 

The  fact  is  that  Luther  himself,  when  he  nailed  his  Theses 

on    the    church    door    at    Wittenberg,  was    not   committing 

himself  to   a   more    momentous   work   than    the   Bishop    of 

Natal  when  he  resolved  to  search  into  the  structure  of  the 

VOL.  I.  [  I 


482  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

Pentateuch.  Each  was  proposing  to  fight  with  a  strong  delu- 
sion ;  and  the  superstition  which  worshipped  the  letter  of  a 
book  was  not  a  jot  better  grounded  than  the  superstition  which 
regarded  a  Papal  indulgence  as  the  remission  of  sin  and  the 
restoration  of  the  penitent  to  peace.  The  circumstances  of 
his  past  life  and  work  had  drawn  away  the  Bishop's  mind  to 
other  channels  ;  but  the  unswerving  truthfulness  of  his  nature 
compelled  him  to  go  thoroughly  into  the  matter,  so  soon  as 
inquiry  was  forced  on  him  as  a  duty  which  he  owed  to  others, 
and  to  none  could  he  owe  this  duty  more  than  to  the  ignorant 
and  helpless,  who  yet  had  wit  enough  to  ask  whether  certain 
things  were  really  so.  Having  once  felt  that  he  was  called 
upon  to  go  into  the  question,  he  never  for  a  moment  hesitated 
in  his  purpose  ;  but  he  wished  to  give  as  little  pain  and  create 
as  little  of  disturbance  as  possible.  He  soon  found  that  the 
work  was  much  more  serious  and  extensive  than  at  the  first 
he  thought  that  it  might  be  ;  and  feeling  that  above  all  things 
he  needed  counsel,  he  turned  to  Dr.  Harold  Browne,  then 
Norrisian  Professor  at  Cambridge,  now  Bishop  of  Winchester. 
To  him  he  wrote,  although  he  did  not  forward,  a  letter  from 
which  the  following  passages  are  extracts  : — 

"  My  remembrance  of  the  friendly  intercourse  which  I  have 
enjoyed  with  you  in  former  days  would  be  enough  to 
assure  me  that  you  will  excuse  my  troubling  you  on  the 
present  occasion,  were  I  not  also  certain  that,  on  far  higher 
grounds,  you  will  gladly  lend  what  aid  you  can  to  a  brother 
in  distress,  and  in  very  great  need  of  advice  and  assistance, 
such  as  few  are  better  able  to  give  than  yourself.  You  will 
easily  understand  that,  in  this  distant  colony,  I  am  far 
removed  from  the  possibility  of  converse  with  those  who 
would  be  capable  of  appreciating  my  difficulties,  and  helping 
me  with  friendly  sympathy  and  counsel.  I  have  many 
friends  in  England  ;  but  there  are  few  to  whom  I  would 
look  more  readily  than  to  yourself  for  the  help  which  I 


1 86 1.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  MATTER.  483 

need,  from  regard  both  to  your  public  position  and  private 
character  ;  and  you  have  given  evidence,  moreover,  in  your 
published  works,  of  that  extensive  reading  and  sound 
judgement,  the  aid  of  which  I  especially  require  under  my 
present  circumstances. 

"  You  will,  of  course,  expect  that,  since  I  have  had  the  charge 
of  this  diocese,  I  have  been  closely  occupied  in  the  study  of 
the  Zulu  tongue,  and  in  translating  the  Scriptures  into  it. 
Through  the  blessing  of  God,  I  have  now  translated  the 
New  Testament  completely,  and  several  parts  of  the  Old, 
among  the  rest  the  Books  of  Genesis  and  Exodus.  In  this 
work  I  have  been  aided  by  intelligent  natives  ;  and,  having 
also  published  a  Zulu  Grammar  and  Dictionary,  I  have 
acquired  sufficient  knowledge  of  the  language  to  be  able  to 
have  intimate  communion  with  the  native  mind  while  thus 
engaged  with  them,  so  as  not  only  to  avail  myself  freely  of 
their  criticisms,  but  to  appreciate  fully  their  objections 
and  difficulties.  Thus,  however,  it  has  happened  that  I 
have  been  brought  agam  face  to  face  with  questions  which 
caused  me  some  uneasiness  in  former  days,  but  with  respect 
to  which  I  was  then  enabled  to  satisfy  my  mind  sufficiently 
for  practical  purposes,  and  I  had  fondly  hoped  to  have  laid 
the  ghosts  of  them  at  last  for  ever 

"  Here,  however,  as  I  have  said,  amidst  my  work  in  this  land, 
I  have  been  brought  face  to  face  with  the  very  questions 
which  I  then  put  by.  While  translating  the  story  of  the 
Flood,  I  have  had  a  simple-minded,  but  intelligent,  native — 
one  with  the  docility  of  a  child,  but  the  reasoning  powers  of 
mature  age — look  up,  and  ask,  '  Is  all  that  true  ?  Do  you 
really  believe  that  all  this  happened  thus, — that  all  the 
beasts,  and  birds,  and  creeping  things  upon  the  earth, 
large  and  small,  from  hot  countries  and  cold,  came  thus  by 
pairs,  and  entered  into  the  ark  with  Noah  ?  And  did  Noah 
gather  food  for  them  all,  for  the  beasts  and  birds  of  prey, 
as  well  as  for  the  rest  ? '  My  heart  answered  in  the  words 
of  the  prophet,  '  Shall  a  man  speak  lies  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord  ? '  I  dared  not  do  so.  My  own  knowledge  of  some 
branches  of  science,  of  geology  in  particular,  had  been  much 

1  I  2 


484  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

increased  since  I  left  England  ;  and  I  now  knew  for  certain, 
on  geological  grounds,  a  fact  of  which  I  had  only  had  mis- 
givings before,  viz.  that  a  universalDehige, such  as  the  Bible 
manifestly  speaks  of,  could  not  possibly  have  taken  place  in 
the  way  described  in  the  Book  of  Genesis,  not  to  mention 
other  difficulties  which  the  story  contains.  I  refer  especially 
to  the  circumstance,  well  known  to  all  geologists,  that  volcanic 
hills  exist  of  immense  extent  in  Auvergne  and  Languedoc, 
which  must  have  been  formed  ages  before  the  Noachan 
deluge,  and  which  are  covered  with  light  and  loose  sub- 
stances, pumice-stone,  &c.,  that  must  have  been  swept  away 
by  a  flood,  but  do  not  exhibit  the  slightest  sign  of  having 
ever  been  so  disturbed.  Of  course,  I  am  well  aware  that  some 
have  attempted  to  show  that  Noah's  deluge  was  only  a 
partial  one.  But  such  attempts  have  ever  seemed  to  me  to 
be  made  in  the  very  teeth  of  the  Scripture  statements, 
which  are  as  plain  and  explicit  as  words  can  possibly  be. 
Nor  is  anything  really  gained  by  supposing  the  Deluge  to 
have  been  partial.  For,  as  waters  must  find  their  own  level 
on  the  earth's  surface,  without  a  special  miracle,  of  which 
the  Bible  says  nothing,  a  flood  which  should  begin  by 
covering  the  top  of  Ararat  (if  that  were  conceivable),  or  a 
much  lower  mountain,  must  necessarily  become  universal, 
and  in  due  time  sweep  over  the  hills  of  Auvergne.  Knowing 
this,  I  felt  that  I  dared  not,  as  a  servant  of  the  God  of 
Truth,  urge  my  brother-man  to  believe  that  which  I  did 
not  myself  believe,  which  I  knew  to  be  untrue  as  a  matter- 
of-fact  historical  narrative.  I  gave  him,  however,  such  a 
reply  as  satisfied  him  for  the  time,  without  throwing  any 
discredit  upon  the  general  veracity  of  the  Bible  history. 
"But  I  was  thus  driven — against  my  will  at  first,  I  may  truly 
say — to  search  more  deeply  into  these  questions  ;  and  I  have 
since  done  so,  to  the  best  of  my  power,  with  the  means  at 
my  disposal  in  this  colony.  And  now  I  tremble  at  the 
result  of  my  inquiries  ;  rather,  I  should  do  so  were  it  not 
that  I  believe  firmly  in  a  God  of  Righteousness  and  Truth  I 
and  Love,  who  both  IS,  and  is  a  rewarder  of  them  that 
diligently  seek  Him.     Should  all  else  give  way  beneath  mc, 

I 


1 86 1.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  MATTER.  485 

I  feel  that  His  Everlasting  Arms  are  still  under  me.  I  am 
sure  that  the  solid  ground  is  there  on  which  my  feet  can 
rest,  in  the  knowledge  of  Him  in  whom  I  live,  and  move, 
and  have  my  being,  who  is  my  faithful  Creator,  my 
Almighty  and  most  merciful  Father.  That  truth  I  see  with 
my  spirit's  eyes,  once  opened  to  the  light  of  it,  as  plainly  as 
I  see  the  sun  in  the  heavens.  And  that  truth,  I  know,  more 
or  less  distinctly  apprehended,  has  been  the  food  of  living 
men,  the  strength  of  brave  souls  that  '  yearn  for  light,'  and 
battle  for  the  right  and  the  true,  the  support  of  struggling  and 
sorrow-stricken  hearts,  in  all  ages  of  the  world,  in  all 
climes,  under  all  religions." 

Having  mentioned  some  of  the  chief  difficulties  in  the 
account  of  the  Exodus,  the  Bishop  went  on  to  ask  advice  in 
the  selection  of  books,  and  to  mention  that  he  had  sent  for 
Hengstenberg's  work  on  the  Pentateuch,  which  he  had  seen 
commended  in  the  Quarterly  article  on  Essays  and  Reviews. 
Of  this  article  he  spoke  as  a  remarkable  paper,  which  shrank, 
however,  from  treating  the  real  question  at  issue,  and  as 
occupied  chiefly  wdth  pitying  the  essayists,  or  censuring  them, 
instead  of  meeting  them  with  arguments. 

"  I  cannot,"  he  said,  "  think  it  to  be  a  fair  way  of  proceeding  to 
point  out,  as  the  apparent  consequence  of  the  course  which 
they  are  pursuing,  that  it  will  necessarily  lead  to  infidelity 
or  atheism.  It  may  be  so  with  some  :  must  it,  therefore,  be 
so  with  all .''  The  same,  of  course,  might  have  been  said — 
and  probably  was  said — freely,  and  just  as  truly,  by  the 
Jews  of  St.  Paul  and  others  ;  and,  in  later  times,  by  mem- 
bers of  the  Romish  Church  of  our  own  Reformers.  Our 
duty,  surely,  is  to  follow  the  truth  wherever  it  leads  us,  and 
to  leave  the  consequences  in  the  hands  of  God.  Moreover, 
in  the  only  instance  where  the  writer  in  the  Quarterly  does 
attempt  to  remove  a  difficulty,  he  explains  away  a  miracle 
by  a  piece  of  thorough  '  neologianism ' — I  mean  where  he 
accounts  for  the  sun  'standing  still'  at  the  word  of  Joshua, 
by  referring  to  '  one  of  the  thousand  other  modes  by  which 


486  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

God's  mighty  power  could  have  accompHshed  that  miracle, 
rather  than  by  the  actual  suspension  of  the  unbroken 
career  of  the  motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies  in  their 
appointed  courses,'  which  last  the  Bible  plainly  speaks  of 
to  a  common  understanding,  though  the  writer  seems  not 
to  believe  in  it. 
"  After  reading  that  article,  I  felt  more  hopelessly  than  ever 
how  hollow  is  the  ground  upon  which  we  have  so  long  been 
standing,  with  reference  to  the  subject  of  the  inspiration  of 
Scripture.  I  see  that  there  is  a  very  general  demand  upon 
the  clerical  authors  of  Essays  and  Reviews  that  they  should 
leave  the  Church  of  England,  or,  at  least,  resign  their  pre- 
ferments. For  my  own  part,  however  much  I  may  dissent, 
as  I  do,  from  some  of  their  views,  I  am  very  far  indeed 
from  judging  them  for  remaining,  as  they  still  do,  as 
ministers  within  her  pale, — knowing  too  well,  by  my  own 
feelings,  how  dreadful  would  be  the  wrench,  to  be  torn  from 
all  one  has  loved  and  revered  by  going  out  of  the  Church. 
Perhaps  they  may  feel  it  to  be  their  duty  to  the  Church 
itself,  and  to  that  which  they  hold  to  be  the  truth,  to  abide 
in  their  stations,  unless  they  are  formally  and  legally  ex- 
cluded from  them,  and  to  claim  for  all  her  members,  clerical 
as  well  as  lay,  that  freedom  of  thought  and  utterance  which 
is  the  very  essence  of  our  Protestant  religion  ;  and  without 
which,  indeed,  in  this  age  of  advancing  science,  the  Church 
of  England  would  soon  become  a  mere  dark  prison-house, 
in  which  the  mind  both  of  the  teacher  and  the  taught  would 
be  fettered  still  with  the  chains  of  past  ignorance,  instead 
of  being,  as  we  fondly  believed,  the  very  home  of  religous 
liberty,  and  the  centre  of  life  and  light  for  all  the  world. 
But,  whatever  may  be  the  fate  of  that  book  or  its  authors, 
it  is  surely  impossible  to  put  down  in  these  days  the  spirit 
of  honest,  truth-seeking  investigation  into  such  matters  as 
these.  The  attempt  to  do  this  would  only  be  like  the 
futile  endeavour  to  sweep  back  the  tide  which  is  rising  at 
our  very  doors.  This  is,  assuredly,  no  time  for  such  trifling. 
Instead  of  trying  to  do  this,  or  to  throw  up  sandbanks  which 
may  serve  for  the  present  moment  to  hide  from  our  view 


1 86 1.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  MATTER.  487 

the  swelling  waters,  it  is  plainly  our  duty  before  God  and 
man  to  see  that  the  foundations  of  our  faith  are  sound,  and 
deeply  laid  in  the  vcr}'  truth  itself" 

The  Bishop  went  on  to  speak  of  the  possible  need  of 
resigning  his  office  if  the  difficulties  pressing  on  him  could 
not  be  removed.  This  question  will  come  before  us  in  its 
proper  place  later  on.  We  have  only  to  remember  here  that 
he  did  not  forward  this  letter,  which  ends  with  the  following 
words  : — 

"  God's  will  must  be  done.  The  law  of  truth  must  be  obeyed. 
I  shall  await  your  reply  before  I  take  any  course  which  may 
commit  me  in  so  serious  a  matter.  And  I  feel  that  1  shall 
do  right  to  take  time  for  careful  deliberation.  Should  my 
difficulties  not  be  removed,  I  shall,  if  God  will,  come  to 
England,  and  there  again  consult  some  of  my  friends.  But 
then,  if  the  step  must  be  taken,  in  God's  name  I  must  take 
it  ;  and  He  Himself  will  provide  for  me  future  work  on 
earth,  of  some  kind  or  other,  if  He  has  work  for  me  to  do." 

A  few  weeks  before  this  letter  was  written  the  Bishop  had 
taken  part  in  an  episcopal  conference  at  Capetown,  January 
1 86 1.  At  the  time  of  that  conference,  to  which  he  had  gone 
for  the  purpose  of  taking  part  in  the  consecration  of  Bishop 
Mackenzie,^  he  had  not  entered  into  the  inquiries  which  led  to 
the  writing  of  his  book  on  the  Pentateuch,  nor  had  he,  of 
course,  any  idea  of  their  results.  The  admission  of  these  facts 
might,  he  was  well  aware,  suggest  to  some  that  his  conclusions 
had  been  hastily  reached  and  might  be  as  hastil}-  given  up.  This 
retort  he  was  prepared  to  endure,  as  he  was  prepared  for  the 
further  rejoinder  that  his  exposure  of  the  difficulties  connected 
with  the  Pentateuch  was  stale  and  flat.  They  had  all  been 
put  forth  b}'  German  critics,  who  had  been  perfcctl}'  answered 
by  their  own  countrymen.  This  was  just  the  point  which 
called  for  settlement.  There  were,  it  is  true,  in  Germany  as  in 
^  See  p.  125. 


488  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

England,  orthodox  critics  and  liberal  critics  ;  and  there,  as  well 
as  here,  the  former  charged  the  latter  with  merely  following  their 
leader  and  repeating  parrot-like  each  his  statement  of  difficul- 
ties, with  the  addition  of  little  or  no  new  matter  of  their  own. 
At  the  worst,  this  charge  could  but  reduce  many  voices  to  one 
voice.  It  could  not  silence  that  one  voice,  except  by  showing 
that  its  utterances  were  false  or  foolish  ;  but  it  was  also  obvious 
that,  if  there  were  a  hundred  independent  critics  working  on 
the  same  records,  they  would  all,  or  almost  all,  fasten  on  the 
same  difficulties,  if  those  diffiadtics  really  exist.  The  seeming 
repetitions  would  be  reall}-  the  most  cogent  evidence  of  their 
reality  and  their  importance.  Still,  wishing  to  avoid  all  bias 
in  what  might  be  thought  the  wrong  direction,  the  Bishop 
resolved  to  confine  himself  to  the  orthodox  Kurtz,  whose 
History  of  the  Old  Covenant  "  maintains  the  ordinary  view  of 
the  Mosaic  origin  and  historical  accuracy  of  the  Pentateuch 
with  great  zeal  and  ability  "  ;  and  not  till  he  had  gone  through 
this  work  did  he  turn  to  the  ponderous  volumes  of  Ewald. 
Having  grappled  with  these,  he  read  carefully  the  orthodox 
works  of  Hengstenberg  and  Havernick,  and  on  the  other 
side  those  of  De  Wette,  Bleek,  Kuenen,  and  Davidson,  the 
last  of  these  being  in  his  opinion  "  the  most  able  work 
which  has  yet  appeared  in  England  on  the  subject  of 
Biblical  criticism." 

During  all  this  time,  he  retained  the  letter  which  he  had 
written  to  Dr.  Browne,  "  to  see  what  effect  further  study  and 
consideration  would  have  upon  "  his  "  views." 

"  At  the  end  of  that  time — in  a  great  measure  by  being  made 
more  fully  aware  of  the  utter  helplessness  of  Kurtz  and 
Hengstenberg  in  their  endeavours  to  meet  the  difficulties 
which  are  raised  by  a  closer  study  of  the  Pentateuch — I 
became  so  convinced  of  the  unhistorical  character  of  very 
considerable  portions  of  the  Mosaic  narrative  that  I  decided 
not  to  forward  my  letter  at  all.    I  did  not  now  need  counsel 


i86i.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  MATTER.  489 

or  assistance  to  relieve  my  own  personal  doubts  :  my  former 
misgivings  had  been  changed  into  certainties.  The  matter 
was  become  much  more  serious.  I  saw  that  it  concerned 
the  whole  Church — not  myself  and  a  few  more  only,  whose 
minds  might  have  been  disturbed  by  making  too  much  of 
minor  difficulties  and  contradictions,  the  force  of  which 
might  be  less  felt  by  others."  ^ 

But  teachers  and  modes  of  teaching  are  not  of  one  kind 
only.  There  are  methods  of  shirking  difficulties  or  of  slurring 
them  over ;  and  there  is  a  mode  of  bringing  out  a  negative 
conclusion  by  drawing  a  vivid  picture  of  the  condition  of 
things  which  seems  to  render  any  other  conclusion  im- 
practicable. We  may  trace  the  popular  or  national  religion, 
worship,  and  society  of  the  Jews  through  the  days  of  the 
Judges  to  those  of  the  earlier  and  later  Kings,  realising  their 
persistent  polytheism,  their  gross,  sensual,  and  cruel  idolatry, 
their  solar  and  phallic  cultus.  We  may  dwell  on  the  protests 
and  struggles  of  the  scanty  band  of  prophets  in  every  age 
against  these  abominations,  showing  that  at  no  time  was  there 
anything  more  than  a  weak  and  evanescent  reformation, 
wrought  by  an  appeal  to  a  higher  sanction  for  which  the 
people  could  not  be  brought  to  care  at  all.  We  may  mark 
the  dense  ignorance  and  obstinate  adherence  to  their  de- 
grading rites  as  clear  evidence  that  they  had  no  acquaintance 
with  a  higher  law  ;  and  so  we  may  imply  that  the  Mosaic  and 
Levitical  codes  and  the  discourses  in  Deuteronomy  were  not 
so  much  a  system  carried  at  anytime  into  practice  as  ideal 
pictures  of  a  state  of  things  which  ought  to  have  been  but 
never  was  realised.  This  method  and  these  conclusions 
clearly  sweep  away  the  historical  character  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, because  they  insinuate  that  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
codes   which   bear   the    name    of    Moses   were   put  together 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  I.  p.  xviii. 


490  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

in  after  times  by  some  who  wished  to  bring  their  country- 
men, even  at  the  eleventh  hour,  to  walk  in  a  better  path  ; 
but  the  strictly  negative  character  of  this  method,  and  of 
its  results,  might  very  probably  not  be  perceived  by  those 
who  regarded  the  Pentateuch  as  historical.  The  impression 
made  by  it  would,  therefore,  be  in  proportion  weaker,  and, 
except  to  the  enlightened  few,  the  real  state  of  things  would 
not  be  made  known  at  all. 

This  method  was  recommended  to  the  Bishop,  only  to  be 
summarily  rejected. 

"  A  friend,"  he  says,  "  to  whom  I  had  submitted  the  book 
before  I  had  decided  to  publish  it,  was  afraid  that  I  might 
give  offence  by  stating  too  plainly  at  the  outset  the  end 
which  I  had  in  view.  .  .  And  he  suggested  that  I  might  do 
more  wisely  to  conceal,  as  it  were,  my  purpose  for  a  time, 
and  lead  the  reader  gradually  on,  till  he  would  arrive  of 
himself,  almost  unawares,  at  the  same  conclusions  as  my 
own.  But  however  judicious  for  a  merely  rhetorical  purpose 
such  a  course  might  have  been,  I  could  not  allow  myself  to 
adopt  it  here,  in  a  matter  where  such  very  important  con- 
sequences were  involved.  I  vmst  state  the  case  plainly  and 
fully  from  the  first.  I  do  not  wish  to  take  the  reader  by 
surprise  or  to  entrap  him  with  guile.  I  wish  him  to  go 
forward  with  his  eyes  open,  and  to  watch  carefully  every 
step  of  the  argument,  with  a  full  consciousness  of  the 
momentous  results  to  which  it  leads,  and  with  a  deter- 
mination to  test  severely,  with  all  the  power  and  skill  he 
can  bring  to  the  work,  but  yet  to  test  Jioiiestly  and  fairlyy 
the  truth  of  every  inference  which  I  have  drawn  and  every 
conclusion  to  which  I  have  arrived." 

In  short,  for  the  Bishop,  as  for  St.  Paul,  there  was  a  sacred 
call  from  One  whom  he  dared  not  to  disobey,  and  whom 
before  all  things  he  longed  to  obey.  There -was  a  woe  on 
both  if  they  failed  to  answer  to  the  call ;  and  for  himself 
the  constraining  power  of  this  call  was  strengthened  by  the 


i862.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  MATTER.  491 

circumstances  of  his  past  life.  For  him,  therefore,  it  was  as 
with  the  prophet  of  old.  The  Lord  God  had  spoken  :  who 
can  but  prophesy  ?  He  was  asked,  "  Why  publish  to  the  world 
matters  like  these,  about  which  theologians  may  have  doubts  .'' " 
To  such  questions  he  could  give  no  heed.  They  were  no 
longer  doubts  to  him  ;  and  it  was  not  theologians  only  who 
were  troubled  with  such  doubts. 

"  We  have,"  he  said,  "  a  duty  to  discharge  towards  that 
large  body  of  our  brethren — hozv  large,  it  is  impossible  to 
say,  but  probably  much  larger  than  is  commonly  imagined 
— who  not  only  doubt,  but  disbelieve,  many  important  parts 
of  the  Mosaic  narrative,  as  well  as  to  those  whose  faith  may 
be  more  simple  and  uninquiring,  though  not,  therefore, 
necessarily,  more  deep  and  sincere,  than  theirs.  We  cannot 
expect  such  as  these  to  look  to  us  for  comfort  and  help  in 
their  religious  perplexities,  if  they  cannot  place  entire  con- 
fidence in  our  honesty  of  purpose  and  good  faith — if  they 
have  any  reason  to  suppose  that  we  are  willing  to  keep 
back  any  part  of  the  truth,  and  are  afraid  to  state  the  plain 
facts  of  the  case." 

Thus  in  the  course  which  he  took  he  had  no  alternative. 
Arriving  in  England  as  a  missionary  Bishop,  he  must  receive 
calls  from  many  quarters  to  plead  the  cause  of  missions  ;  and 
he  could  not  decline  acceding  to  such  calls  without  assigning, 
by  the  publication  of  the  First  Part  of  his  book,  the  reason 
why,  with  his  present  work  in  hand,  he  could  not  comply  with 
them.  The  question  was  to  him  a  matter  of  life  and  death. 
He  was  not  aware,  after  the  delivery  of  the  judgement  in  the 
case  of  Essays  and  Rcvieivs,  that  he  had  in  any  way  violated 
the  law  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  and  in  any  case,  as  a 
Bishop  of  that  Church,  he  dissented  entirely  from  the  principle 
laid  down  by  some  that  the  question  with  which  he  intended 
to  deal  was  not  even  an  open  question  for  an  English  clergy- 
man.    Against  this  contemptible  sophistry  Dr.  Stanley  had, 


492  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

about  eighteen  months  before,  protested  with  all  his  might  in 
the  pages  of  the  EdinlmrgJi  Review}  It  was  a  shame  to 
Englishmen  that  any  among  them  should  say  or  think 

"  that  truth  was  made  for  the  laity  and  falsehood  for  the  clergy 
— that  truth  is  tolerable  everywhere  except  in  the  mouths 
of  the  ministers  of  the  God  of  Truth — that  falsehood, 
driven  from  every  other  corner  of  the  educated  world, 
may  find  an  honoured  refuge  behind  the  consecrated 
bulwarks  of  the  sanctuary." 

The  Bishop  of  Natal  himself  could  scarcely  denounce  with 
greater  earnestness  this  godless  theory  of  a  National  Church  as 
tainted  with  a  far  deeper  unbelief  than  any  which  could  ever 
be  ascribed  to  professed  infidels.  He  could  scarcely  urge 
more  strongly  that  they  who  can  sincerely  accept  as  a  whole 
the  constitution  and  the  worship  of  the  Church  of  which  they 
are  ministers  will  count  it  treason  to  the  Church  and  to  its 
Divine  Head  to  desert  either  its  communion  or  its  ministry. 
He  would  heartily  approve,  but  he  could  scarcely  add  force 
to.  Dr.  Stanley's  words,  that  if  the  obligations  laid  upon  the 
clergy  involved  such  differences  between  their  belief  and  that 
of  the  educated  laity,  it  would  be  the  bounden  duty  of  both, 

"  in  the  name  of  religion  and  common-sense,  to  rise  as  one 
man  and  to  tear  to  shreds  such  barriers  between  the  teachers 
and  the  taught,  between  Him  whose  name  is  Truth  and 
those  whose  worship  is  only  acceptable  if  offered  to  Him  in 
spirit  and  in  truth." 

It  was  well,  indeed,  for  the  Church  of  England  that  the 
Bishop  of  Natal,  in  full  accord  though  he  might  be  with  all 
these  utterances  of  Dr.  Stanley,  did  not  adopt  the  critical 
method  which  was,  no  doubt,  best  suited  to  Dr.  Stanley's 
circumstances,  but  which  would  have  fallen  with  little  effect 

1  April  1861,  p.  495. 


1 862.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  MATTER. 


493 


on  one  of  the  chief  superstitions  and  extravagances  of  orthodox 
Christendom. 

But  while  smiting  this  superstition,  the  Bishop  never  made 
any  attempt  to  deny  the  fact  that  he  had  himself  shared  it. 
The  belief  that  every  chapter,  every  verse,  every  word,  every 
syllable,  every  letter  of  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  Scriptures  is 
the  direct  utterance  of  the  Most  High,  was  the  creed  of  the 
school  in  which  he  was  educated,  and  it  cost  him  a  hard 
struggle  to  break  away  from  it. 

"  God  is  my  witness,"  he  says,  "  what  hours  of  wretchedness 
I  have  spent  at  times,  while  reading  the  Bible  devoutly 
from  day  to  day,  and  reverencing  every  word  of  it  as  the 
Word  of  God,  when  petty  contradictions  met  me,  which 
seemed  to  my  reason  to  conflict  with  the  notion  of  the 
absolute  historical  veracity  of  every  part  of  Scripture,  and 
which,  as  I  felt,  in  the  study  of  any  other  book  we  should 
honestly  treat  as  errors  or  misstatements,  without  in  the 
least  detracting  from  the  real  value  of  the  book  !  But,  in 
those  days,  I  was  taught  that  it  was  my  duty  to  fling  the 
suggestion  from  me  at  once,  'as  if  it  were  a  loaded  shell 
shot  into  the  fortress  of  my  soul,'  ^  or  to  stamp  out  desper- 
ately, as  with  an  iron  heel,  each  spark  of  honest  doubt, 
which  God's  own  gift,  the  love  of  truth,  had  kindled  in  m}' 
bosom.  ...  I  thank  God  that  I  was  not  able  long  to  throw 
dust  in  the  eyes  of  my  own  mind,  and  do  violence  to  the 
love  of  truth  in  this  way."  - 

It  may  suit  those  who  sneered  at  the  "  puerile  simplicity  " 
of  the  Bishop  who  could  be  converted  by  an  intelligent  Zulu, 
to  say  that  nothing  else  could  be  expected  in  one  who  had 
thus  himself  been  in  bondage  to  the  letter.  But  all  unpre- 
judiced and  impartial  thinkers  and  judges  will  be  thankful 
that  a  man  has  been  found  whose  powers  of  judgement  were 
not  stunted  and  starved  by  the  creed  which  he  shook  off. 

1  Bishop  S.  Wilberforce  ;  see  p.  164,  iiolc. 
"^  Pentateuch,  Part  I.  p.  6. 


494  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

This  warping  and  withering  of  the  mental  powers  is  so  sadly 
manifest  in  all  but  an  infinitesimally  small  minority  of  Biblio- 
laters, as  to  make  it  matter  both  of  wonder  and  rejoicing  that 
the  early  bondage  quickened,  rather  than  dulled,  the  Bishop's 
powers  of  perception,  and  thus  excited  in  him  only  an  un- 
faltering resolution  to  seek  out  the  truth  at  all  hazards,  and 
a  manly  candour  in  setting  forth  the  nature  of  his  conclusions. 
It  was  supposed  at  the  time,  and  some  may  suppose  still,  that 
the  Bishop  came  to  regard  the  historical  books  of  the  Old 
Testament  as  unhistorical,  solely  because  he  could  not  bring 
himself  to  give  credit  to  the  stupendous  wonders  recorded  in 
them,  to  the  standing  still  of  the  sun  and  moon,  the  dividing 
of  the  waters  of  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Jordan,  the  articulate 
human  speech  of  Balaam's  ass,  or  the  marvels  of  the  Egyptian 
magicians,  or  because  he  recoiled  from  some  of  the  precepts 
or  laws  of  the  Mosaic  or  Levitical  codes.  One  or  two  such 
laws  he  mentions — the  provisions,  for  instance,  which  directed 
that  in  certain  cases  a  man  gaining  his  freedom  should  leave 
his  wife  and  children  in  slavery,  or  that  a  master  who  beat 
his  slave  to  death  should  not  be  punished  if  the  slave  sur- 
vived his  torture  for  a  day  or  two,  because  he  was  his  money. 
Cynical  critics  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  may  have  laughed 
at  the  sentimentality  which  could  make  a  fuss  about  nothing  ; 
but  their  jeers  furnish  no  reason  for  omitting  the  Bishop's 
record  of  the  impression  made  by  these  laws  upon  Kafir 
minds. 

*'  I  shall  never  forget  the  revulsion  of  feeling  with  which  a 
very  intelligent  Christian  native,  with  whose  help  I  was 
translating  those  words  into  the  Zulu  tongue,  first  heard 
them  as  words  said  to  be  uttered  by  the  same  great  and 
gracious  Being  whom  I  was  teaching  him  to  trust  in  and 
adore.  His  whole  soul  revolted  against  the  notion  that  the 
great  and  blessed  God,  the  merciful  Father  of  all  mankind, 
would  speak  of  a  servant  or  maid  as    mere  '  money,'  and 


1862.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  MATTER.  495 

allow  a  horrible  crime  to  go  unpunished,  because  the  victim 
of  the  brutal  usage  had  survived  a  few  hours.  My  own 
heart  and  conscience  at  the  time  fully  sympathised  with 
his.  But  I  then  clung  to  the  notion  that  the  main  substance 
of  the  narrative  was  historically  true.  And  I  relieved  his 
difficulty  and  my  own  for  the  present  by  telling  him  that  I 
supposed  that  such  words  as  these  were  written  down  by 
Moses,  and  believed  by  him  to  have  been  divinely  given  to 
him,  because  the  thought  of  them  arose  in  his  heart,  as  he 
conceived,  by  the  inspiration  of  God,  and  that  hence  to  all 
such  laws  he  prefixed  the  formula,  'Jehovah  said  to  Moses,' 
without  its  being  on  that  account  necessary  for  us  to  suppose 
that  they  were  actually  spoken  by  the  Almighty.  This  was, 
however,  a  very  great  strain  upon  the  cord  which  bound  me 
to  the  ordinary  belief  in  the  historical  veracity  of  the 
Pentateuch,  and  since  then  that  cord  has  snapped  in  twain 
altogether." 

The  temper  of  mind  which  mocked  at  the  questions  of  the 
intelligent  Zulu  may  regard  his  revulsion  of  feeling  as  a  matter 
to  be  treated  rather  with  a  laugh  than  seriously.  But  it  was 
on  no  such  considerations  even  as  these  that  the  Bishop's  trust 
in  the  historical  accuracy  of  the  Pentateuch  was  finally  dis- 
pelled. It  was  not  only  a  question  of  marvels,  of  external 
revelation,  of  the  moral  character  of  Mosaic  or  other  precepts 
or  enactments.  The  doubt,  first,  and  lastly  the  rejection  of 
the  narrative  as  history  was  forced  upon  him  by  the  "  many 
impossibilities  involved  in  it,  when  treated  as  relating  simple 
matters  of  fact,"  and  it  was  his  bounden  duty  to  set  forth  this 
conclusion  plainly.  Infidelity,  or  lasciviousness,  it  might  be 
urged,  must  be  in  many  cases  the  consequences  of  his  pub- 
lishing it.  It  was  enough  to  reply  that  infidelity  and  las- 
civiousness were  as  rampant  under  the  strictest  traditional 
theology  as  under  the  freest  German  criticism,  and  that  the 
greatest  license  prevailed  where  the  popular  creed  was  that  of 
the  Westminster  Confession.     It  mitrht  be  said  that  all  faith 


496  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

in  God  must  go  if  belief  in  the  historical  trustworthiness  of 
the  Pentateuch  be  lost.  But  the  statement  would  be  a  mere 
falsehood. 

"  Our  belief  in  the  Living  God  remains  as  sure  as  ever,  though 
not  the  Pentateuch  only  but  the  whole  Bible  were  removed. 
It  was  written  on  our  hearts  by  God's  own  finger,  as  surely 
as  by  the  hand  of  the  Apostle  in  the  Bible,  that  God  IS,  and 
is  a  rewarder  of  them  that  diligently  seek  Him.  It  is 
written  there  also  as  plainly  as  in  the  Bible,  that  God  is  not 
mocked, — that  whatsoever  a  man  soweth  that  shall  he  reap, 
and  that  he  that  soweth  to  the  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh  reap 
corruption." 

The  Bishop  had  here  touched  the  very  root  of  the  matter. 
The  superstitious  reverence  paid  to  the  mere  letter  of  a  book 
points  to  the  failure  or  to  the  absence  of  the  conviction  that 
the  Church  is  a  living  society  under  a  living  Head,  who  is 
ever  present  with  it  and  in  it,  and  in  every  member  of  it.  With 
the  foresight  of  true  spiritual  perception,  he  could  say : — 

"  It  is,  perhaps,  God's  will  that  we  shall  be  taught  in  this  our 
day,  among  other  precious  lessons,  not  to  build  up  our  faith 
upon  a  book,  though  it  be  the  Bible  itself,  but  to  realise 
more  truly  the  blessedness  of  knowing  that  He  Himself,  the 
Living  God,  our  Father  and  Friend,  is  nearer  and  closer  to 
us  than  any  book  can  be,  that  His  voice  within  the  heart 
can  be  heard  continually  by  the  obedient  child  that  listens 
for  it,  and  tJiat  shall  be  our  Teacher  and  Guide  in  the  path 
of  duty,  which  is  the  path  of  life,  when  all  other  helpers,  even 
the  words  of  the  Best  of  Books,  may  fail  us." 

But,  let  the  historical  untrustworthiness  of  its  narrative  be 
what  it  may,  the  Pentateuch  still  contains  abundance  of  matter 
"  profitable  for  doctrine,  reproof,  correction,  instruction  in 
righteousness.' 

"It  still  remains  an  integral  portion  of  the  Book,  which,  what- 
ever intermixture  it  may  show  of  human  elements, — of  error. 


1 862.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  MATTER.  497 

infirmity,  passion,  and  ignorance, — has  yet,  through  God's 
Providence,  and  the  special  working  of  His  Spirit  on  the 
minds  of  the  writers,  been  the  means  of  reveahng  to  us  His 
true  Name,  the  Name  of  the  only  living  and  true  God,  and 
has  all  along  been,  and,  as  far  as  we  know,  will  never  cease 
to  be,  the  mightiest  instrument  in  the  hand  of  the  Divine 
Teacher  for  awakening  in  our  minds  just  conceptions  of 
His  character,  and  of  His  gracious  and  merciful  dealings 
with  the  children  of  men."  ^ 

This  confession  fully  satisfies  any  requirements  of  the 
Articles  and  formularies  of  the  English  Church  ;  it  more 
than  satisfies  the  demands  of  Dr.  Lushington's  judgement  in 
the  case  arising  out  of  Essays  and  Revieivs ;  but  it  failed 
altogether  to  satisfy  the  Metropolitan  and  his  adherents, 
who  were  resolved  on  imposing  the  ecclesiastical  yoke  on  the 
neck  of  the  Church  of  Southern  Africa.  The  Bishop  was, 
nevertheless,  right  in  saying  that 

"  the  time  is  come,  in  the  ordering  of  God's  Providence  and  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  when  such  a  work  as  this  must  be 
taken  in  hand,  not  in  a  light  and  scoffing  spirit,  but  in  that 
of  a  devout  and  living  faith,  which  seeks  only  Truth,  and 
follows  fearlessly  its  footsteps  ;  when  such  questions  as 
these  must  be  asked — be  asked  reverently,  as  by  those 
who  feel  that  they  are  treading  on  holy  ground — but  be 
asked  firmly,  as  by  those  who  would  be  able  to  giv^e  an 
account  of  the  hope  which  is  in  them,  and  to  know  that 
the  grounds  are  sure  on  which  they  rest  their  trust  for  time 
and  for  eternity." 

The  first  passage  of  the  Pentateuch  selected  by  the  Bishop 
for  examination  relates  to  the  birth  of  Hezron  and  Hamul, 
sons  of  Pharez,  son  of  Judah.  This  birth  is  stated  most 
positively  to  have  taken  place  in  Canaan,  and  Hezron  and 
Hamul    are    mentioned    as   included  in  the    list    of   seventy 

^  Pentateuch^  Part  I.  p.  13. 
VOL.  I.  K  K 


498  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

persons  (Jacob,  Joseph,  and  Joseph's  two  sons  being  among 
them)  who  went  down  from  Canaan  into  Egypt.  We  get 
then  the  following  chronology  for  the  incidents  in  the  life  of 
some  of  the  sons  of  Jacob.  Joseph  is  spoken  of  as  thirty 
years  old  when  he  stands  before  Pharaoh  as  ruler  over  all  the 
land  of  Egypt.  When  his  father  came  down  to  Egypt  nine 
years  later,  he  was,  therefore,  thirty-nine  years  of  age  ;  and  so 
his  brother  Judah,  who  was  three  years  older  than  himself, 
was  at  that  time  forty-two.  But  if  we  turn  to  Genesis  xxxviii. 
we  find  that  in  the  course  of  these  forty-two  years  the  follow- 
ing events  happen.  Judah  grows  up,  marries,  and  has  three 
sons.  Of  these  sons  two  grow  up,  marry  (the  second  marrying 
his  brother's  widow),  and  die.  The  widow  deceives  Judah, 
and  has  by  him  twin  sons,  of  whom  one  grows  up,  marries, 
and  has  two  sons,  Hezron  and  Hamul,  who  are  thus  great- 
grandsons  of  a  man  not  forty-two  years  old.  The  Bishop 
remarks : — 

"  The  above  being  certainly  incredible,  w-e  are  obliged  to 
conclude  that  one  of  the  two  accounts  must  be  untrue.  Yet 
the  statement  that  Hezron  and  Hamul  were  born  in  the 
land  of  Canaan  is  vouched  so  positively  by  the  many 
passages  which  sum  up  the  seventy  souls,  that  to  give  up 
this  point  is  to  give  up  an  essential  part  of  the  whole  story. 
But  then  this  point  cannot  be  maintained,  however  essential 
to  the  narrative,  without  supposing  that  the  other  series  of 
events  had  taken  place  beforehand,  which  we  have  seen  to 
be  incredible." 

Here,  then,  is  a  manifest  contradiction.  If  we  choose  to 
admit,  as  in  all  honesty  we  are  bound  to  admit,  that  this 
portion  of  the  story  is  not  a  narrative  of  facts,  we  may  pass 
on  without  entangling  ourselves  in  so-called  reconciliations. 
The  commentator  Thomas  Scott  saw  that  Pharez  at  the  time 
of  the  descent  into  Egypt  would,  if  born,  be  only  an  infant, 
and  could  not,  therefore,  be  the  father  of  children  whom  he 


J 


l862.  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  MATTER.  499 

took  with  him  from  Canaan  ;  but  he  thought  that  he  had 
solved  the  difficuhy  by  saying  that  the  heads  of  families  born 
in  Egypt  during  Jacob's  life  were  included  in  the  list.  The 
record,  however,  says  that  Pharez  and  his  sons  were  all  born 
not  in  Eg}'pt  but  in  Canaan.  Kurtz  professes  to  rid  himself 
of  the  perplexity  by  asserting  that  the  grandsons  and  great- 
grandsons  of  Jacob  and  Judah,  though  not  born,  were  in 
their  fathers,  and  therefore  entered  Egypt  with  them.  But 
so  assuredly  were  their  great-great-grandsons  and  all  their 
children  from  that  day  to  this.  With  calm  effrontery 
Kurtz  adds, 

"  Objections    have    been    raised    to    thi5    interpretation   from 
various  quarters  ;  but  we  must  adhere  to  it." 

Certainly  we  must,  the  Bishop  replies,  if  the  historical  character 
of  the  Pentateuch  is  to  be  maintained  at  all  costs  ;  but  it  can 
be  maintained  only  by  the  assertion  of  an  equivocation  or  a 
falsehood — only  by  tearing  to  pieces  the  statements  of  the 
book  whose  veracity  is  to  be  defended.  The  very  principles 
by  which  commentators  like  Hengstenberg  allow  themselves 
to  be  guided  involve  insincerity  ;  words  mean  in  many  or 
most  cases  what  they  seem  not  to  mean  ;  and  theological  or 
religious  considerations  are  introduced  to  account  for  or  to 
justify  this  misuse  of  language.  It  is  true  that  in  the  vision 
of  the  Apocalypse  the  number  of  the  servants  of  God  sealed 
on  their  foreheads  is  twelve  thousand  for  each  tribe  ;  and  we 
see  at  once  that  there  is  here  no  pretence  of  an  historical 
enumeration.  But  it  is  quite  otherwise  when  we  find  the 
family  of  Jacob  at  the  time  of  the  descent  into  Egypt  men- 
tioned as  consisting  of  seventy  souls,  Jacob  himself  with 
Joseph  and  his  two  sons  being  included  to  make  up  the  total  ; 
and  when  elsewhere — Genesis  xlvi.  26 — the  number  excluding 
these  four  is  given  at  three-score  and  six.     In  spite  of  this, 

Hengstenberg  treats  the  numeration  as  mystical. 

K  K  2 


500  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

"  The  author's  object  in  making  this  computation  is  to  show 
from  how  small  a  quantity  of  seed  so  rich  a  harvest  was 
produced.  For  this  object  it  was  perfectly  indifferent  to  him 
whether  the  numbers  were  40,  50,  60,  or  70.  The  contrast 
between  these  numbers  and  the  hundreds  of  thousands  re- 
main the  same.  The  author,  who  must  be  judged  by  the 
standard  of  a  sacred  historian,  not  of  a  writer  of  statistics, 
could  hence  follow  his  theological  principle,  which  recom- 
mended to  him  the  choice  of  the  number  seventy.  Seven 
is  the  signature  of  the  covenant  between  God  and  Israel. 
By  fixing  on  the  covenant  number  the  author  intimated 
that  the  increase  was  the  covenant  blessing." 

In  short,  the  sacred  historian  is  emancipated  from  every 
duty  by  which  other  historians  are  supposed  to  be  bound,  and 
his  standard  enables  him  to  play  fast  and  loose  with  words, 
facts,  and  figures.  If  the  contrast  was  the  only  thing  of 
moment,  it  would  have  been  far  more  impressive,  even  on  his 
own  theological  principle,  if  he  had  represented  the  seed 
by  the  covenant  number  seven  and  the  harvest  by  seven 
millions. 

The  difficulties  connected  with  the  gathering  of  the  assembly 
or  the  congregation  before  the  door  of  the  tabernacle  are  more 
striking.  That  these  words  are  meant  to  denote  the  whole 
body  of  the  people  there  can  be  no  question,  and  the  attempts 
to  limit  their  meaning  in  some  passages  to  the  chief  men  or 
the  elders  are  desperate.  The  passover  was  to  be  killed  by 
the  whole  assembly  of  the  congregation  ;  the  whole  congrega- 
tion or  mass  of  the  people  murmur  against  Moses  and  Aaron, 
and  reproach  them  with  bringing  the  whole  assembly  into 
the  wilderness  to  kill  them  with  hunger.  In  the  story  of 
Korah  the  congregation  is  pointedly  distinguished  from  the 
elders.  In  Joshua  it  includes  the  women,  the  little  ones,  and 
the  strangers  conversant  among  them  ;  and  these  certainly 
would   not  all  be  exempted   from  the  plague  which  breaks 


1 862.  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  MATTER.  501 

out  in  the  congregation.  Of  this  mighty  body  the  603,550 
Israehtish  warriors  formed  only  a  part ;  and  this  vast  mass  is 
invited  or  commanded  to  assemble  before  the  door  of  the 
tabernacle — in  other  words,  within  the  court.  But  the  width 
of  the  tabernacle  was  18  feet,  its  length  34,  while  the  court 
w^as  about  180  feet  long  and  90  broad.  The  latter,  when 
thronged,  might  have  held  some  5,000  people  ;  but  if  merely 
the  adult  males  of  the  people  had  stood  nine  abreast  in  front 
of  the  tabernacle  door  (and  more  could  not  have  stood 
in  a  space  18  feet  in  width),  they  would  have  formed  a  line 
of  nearly  twenty  miles.  Moses,  again,  and  Joshua  address 
the  whole  assembly  of  the  people  ;  but  what  human  voice 
could  make  itself  heard  by  a  multitude  of  three  millions  ?  In 
the  same  way,  allowing  four  square  yards  only  for  each 
person,  we  find  that  their  camp  must  have  covered  more  than 
1,650  acres.  According  to  the  Levitical  direction,  the  priest 
was  to  carry  away  daily  the  refuse  of  all  the  sacrifices  to 
a  spot  outside  this  camp  ;  and  even  if  it  be  allowed  that 
he  might  do  the  work  by  deputy,  the  difliculty  remains  much 
where  it  was  for,  in  truth,  from  the  numbers  given,  the  camp, 
according  to  the  commentator  Thomas  Scott,  must  have 
formed  a  movable  city  of  twelve  miles  square.  From  this 
huge  space  the  people  were  every  day  to  carry  out  their 
rubbish,  and  into  it  they  must  bring  their  daily  supplies 
water  and  fuel,  after  first  cutting  down  the  latter  where  they 
found  it.  The  supposition,  as  the  Bishop  remarks,  involves 
an  absurdity  ;  and  it  is  a  mere  gratuitous  and  useless  assump- 
tion, if  we  say  that  the  narrative  in  its  original  form  related 
the  exodus  of  a  scanty  troop  with  a  few  women  and  children, 
for  whose  numbers  the  tabernacle  described  in  the  record 
might  amply  suffice.  The  question  is  then  shifted  to  the 
date  of  the  description  of  the  tabernacle  and  of  the  laws 
relating  to  it ;  and  if  these  belong  to  a  comparatively  late 
age  of  Jewish  history,  their  historical  character  vanishes.     In 


502  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

any  case  no  trust  whatever  can  be  placed  in  the  alleged 
numbers  of  the  Israelites  at  the  time  of  their  departure  out 
of  Egypt. 

It  is  even  more  astonishing  to  find  this  people,  who  fled  out 
of  the  land  of  bondage  in  haste,  "  taking  their  dough  before  it 
was  leavened,  their  kneading-troughs  being  bound  up  in  their 
clothes  upon  their  shoulders,"  provided  soon  afterwards  with 
tents,  with  armour,  and  with  weapons.     A  Levitical  precept 
refers  to  their  having  dwelt  in  booths  on  coming  out  of  Egypt ; 
but  there  is  not,  the  Bishop  remarks,  the  slightest  indication 
in  the  story  that  they  ever  did   live  in  booths,  nor  is  it  con- 
ceivable when  they  could  have  done  so.^     Where  were  the 
boughs  and  bushes  needed  for  this  purpose  to  be  found  .■'    But 
if  they  used   tents,  then   at   the  very  least   200,000  would  be 
needed  for  a  population  of  two  millions.     Where  did  they  get 
these  tents .''      Had    they   been    provided    in   expectation   of 
marching,  when  their  request  was  merely  to  be  allowed  to  go 
three  days'  journey  into  the  wilderness  .-'     They  had  not  lived 
in  tents    in   Egypt,  for  they  were  to  strike  the  blood  of  the 
Paschal  lamb  on  the  two  side-posts  and  on  the  lintel  or  upper 
door-post   of   their    houses.      How,  again,  were  these  tents 
carried  .'*     Their  own   backs  were   sufficiently  burdened  with 
the  dough  and  the  kneading-troughs,  together  with  the  grain 
needed  for  the  first  month's  use,  for  they  had  no  manna  given 
to  them  until  the  fifteenth  day  of  the  second  month  after  their 
departing  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt.    The  cattle  might,  indeed, 
have  been   used    for   this    purpose ;    and  a  single  ox  might 
perhaps  carry  four  canvas  tents  of  the  lightest  modern   make. 
He  could   hardly  bear  more  than   one  heavy  tent   made   of 
skins  ;  and   thus   200,000  oxen  would   have  been  needed  for 
the  wants  of  the  Israelites.    But  "  oxen  are  not  usually  trained 
to  carry  goods  upon  their  backs  as  pack-oxen,  and  will  by  no 
means  do  so  if  untrained." 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  I.  p.  45. 


1 862.  THE  PENTA  TE  UCH :    ITS  MA  TTER. 


503 


We  thus  find  ourselves  plunged  into  a  narrative  which  is 
honeycombed  with  impossibilities  ;  and  each  step  does  little 
more  than  reveal  fresh  difficulties  or  fresh  marvels.  The 
down-trodden  victims  of  Pharaoh's  taskmasters,  who  had 
crouched  in  abject  fear  beneath  the  driver's  lash,  suddenly 
appear  as  a  nation  with  an  armed  force  of  more  than  600,000 
warriors.  They  are  harnessed,  and  amply  provided  with 
weapons.  If  they  had  this  armour  and  these  weapons  in 
Egypt,  how  had  they  been  kept  down,  and  how  had  they 
allowed  themselves  to  be  kept  down  t  According  to  Herodotus 
the  whole  caste  of  all  the  warriors  in  Egypt  numbered  only 
160,000  fighting  men.  If  all  these  had  gone  out  against  the 
Israelites,  if  all  had  been  drowned  in  the  Red  Sea,  if,  when 
dead,  they  had  retained  their  weapons  in  their  grasp,  and  if 
their  armour  and  their  weapons  had  all  come  into  the  hands 
of  the  fugitives,  not  less  than  440,000  Israelite  warriors  would 
still  have  been  without  weapons  or  armour.  Some  orthodox 
critics  have  not  been  ashamed  of  resorting  to  the  grotesque 
supposition  that  the  Israelites  borrowed  both  w^eapons  and 
armour  from  their  enemies  on  the  night  of  the  Exodus  ;  but  if 
they  came  out  from  the  country  known  to  us  as  Egypt,  they 
came  from  a  land  where  only  the  warrior  caste  was  armed. 
But  these  men  would  belong  to  Pharaoh's  army,  and  the 
surrender  of  all  their  arms  would,  as  we  have  seen,  leave 
very  much  more  than  half  the  Israelites  unarmed.  By  this 
ludicrous  supposition  the  Israelites,  or  at  least  160,000  of 
them,  would  be  armed,  and  their  enemies  absolutely  defence- 
less. Yet  the  latter  pursue,  and  the  former  cry  out  in  panic 
terror,  "  sore  afraid." 

^'  If,  then,"  the  Bishop  urged,  "  the  historical  veracity  of  this 
part  of  the  Pentateuch  is  to  be  maintained,  we  must  believe 
that  600,000  armed  men  (though  it  is  inconceivable  how 
they  obtained  their  arms)  had,  by  reason  of  their  long 
servitude,    become    so    debased    and    inhuman    in    their 


504  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

cowardice  (and  yet  they  fought  bravely  enough  with 
Amalek  a  month  afterwards)  that  they  could  not  strike 
a  single  blow  for  their  wives  and  children,  if  not  for  their 
own  lives  and  liberties,  but  could  only  weakly  wail  and 
murmur  against  Moses,  saying,  '  It  had  been  better  for  us 
to  serve  the  Egyptians  than  that  we  should  die  in  the 
wilderness. 


) )) 


The  difficulties  connected  with  the  institution  of  the  Pass- 
over are  of  a  still  more  serious  kind,  for  we  are  now  dealing 
with  injunctions  which  are  said  to  come  from  Jehovah  Him- 
self We  have  here  some  passages  which  cannot  on  any 
supposition  be  made  to  match  with  the  rest  of  the  story.  We 
have  special  charges  about  the  choosing  of  the  lamb,  and 
other  rites  spreading  over  many  days,  and  at  the  same  time 
we  have  the  repeated  declaration  that  the  first  announcement 
relating  to  the  Passover  was  made  on  the  day  preceding  the 
night  in  which  the  Egyptian  firstborn  were  destroyed.  We 
have,  therefore,  to  see  what  the  narrative  really  implies. 

"  Moses  called  for  all  the  elders  of  Israel.  We  must  suppose, 
then,  that  the  elders  lived  somewhere  near  at  hand.  But 
where  did  the  two  millions  live  ?  And  how  could  the  order 
to  keep  the  Passover  have  been  conve}'ed  with  its  minutest 
particulars  to  each  individual  lioiisehold  in  this  vast  com- 
munity in  one  day,  rather  in  twelve  hours,  since  Moses 
received  the  command  on  the  very  same  day  on  which  they 
were  to  kill  the  Passover  at  even.  Exodus  xii.  6 .-' 

"  It  must  be  observed  that  it  was  absolutely  necessary  that 
the  notice  should  be  distinctly  given  to  each  separate 
family.  For  it  was  a  matter  of  life  and  death.  Upon  the 
due  performance  of  the  Divine  command  it  depended 
whether  Jehovah  should  'stride  across'  the  threshold,  and 
protect  the  house  from  the  angel  of  death,  or  not.  And  yet 
the  whole  matter  was  perfectly  new  to  them.  The  specific 
directions — about  choosing  the  lamb,  killing  it  at  even, 
sprinkling  its  blood,  and  eating  it  with  unleavened  bread, 


1 862.  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  MATTER.  505 

'  not  raw,  nor  sodden  at  all  with  water,  but  roast  with  fire, 
with  loins  girded,  their  shoes  on  their  feet,  and  their  staff  in 
their  hand,' — were  now  for  the  first  time  communicated  to 
Moses,  by  him  to  the  elders,  and  by  them  to  the  people. 
These  directions,  therefore,  could  not  have  been  conveyed 
by  any  mere  sig)i^  intimating"  that  they  were  now  to  carry 
into  execution  something  about  which  they  had  been 
informed  before."  ^ 

There  would,  however,  be  no  great  difficulty  in  conveying 
the  information  to  the  Hebrews  (due  time  being  allowed  for 
the  purpose),  even  if  they  lived  in  a  city  as  large  as  London. 
But  in  this  case  twelve  hours  alone  are  allotted  for  this  task, 
for  the  bringing  together  of  the  lambs  for  the  Passover,  and 
for  the  gigantic  work  of  borrowing  (as  it  is  termed),  which 
was  to  precede  the  rite.  To  make  this  borrowing  the  easier, 
wc  may,  if  we  please,  assume  not  only  (as  we  are  told)  that 
they  were  living  in  the  midst  of  the  Egyptians,  but  that  the 
latter,  hating  the  mad  folly  of  their  king,  had  a  friendly  feel- 
ing, and  even  a  deep  respect,  for  the  Israelites  ;  that  many  of 
them  lodged  with  Israelite  householders ;  and  (as  Hengstenberg 
supposes)  that  these  lodgers  were  persons  of  good  property,  who 
would  give  from  their  abundance  gold  and  silver  ornaments 
and  clothes.  In  this  way  we  may  account  for  the  Hebrews 
possessing  not  a  little  raiment  and  jewelry  ;  but  we  can  do 
so  only  on  the  hypothesis  that  under  the  guise  of  borrowing 
they  were  robbing  and  pillaging  not  their  enemies  but  their 
friends.  The  difficulty  of  the  supposition  that  the  latter 
would  be  thus  eager  to  lend  to  a  people  who  were  in  the  wild 
excitement  of  instant  departure  is  one  of  which  critics  like 
Hengstenberg  seem  to  think  it  needless  to  take  any  notice. 

But  the  Hebrews  were  not  living  together  with  the  Egyp- 
tians. They  were  owners  of  vast  herds  and  flocks  which  they 
must  have  been  tending  over  a  wide  extent  of  country.  If  we 
^  Pentateucli,  Part  I.  p.  56. 


5o6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

take  the  numbers  of  the  Pentateuch,  at  least  150,000  male 
lambs  would  be  wanted  for  that  first  Passover,  and  this 
according  to  the  experience  of  sheep  masters  in  Australia 
and  Natal  implies  a  flock  of  2,000,000  sheep  and  lambs  of  all 
ages,  of  which  two  only  could  be  supported  by  each  acre  of 
land.  But  even  if  five  sheep  be  allowed  to  each  acre,  the 
Israelites  would  have  required  400,000  acres  of  grazing  land 
for  their  sheep  alone,  and,  it  may  be,  a  larger  space  still  for 
their  oxen.  They  would,  therefore,  be  scattered  over  an  area 
equal  to  that  of  the  counties  of  Bedfordshire  and  Hertfordshire 
together.  To  all  these  people,  then,  so  scattered,  the  warning 
to  keep  the  Passover  within  twelve  hours  had  to  be  conveyed, 
and  with  it  the  strict  injunction  that  no  one  was  to  go  out  at  the 
door  of  his  house  until  the  morning  !  But  they  were  not  allowed 
to  obey  this  injunction  even  if  they  had  willed  to  do  so,  for  at 
midnight  came  from  Moses  the  order  for  instant  departure  to 
families  who  had  only  just  been  told  that  they  were  not  to 
think  of  stirring  from  their  houses  before  daybreak. 

We  are  not,  in  these  incidents,  dealing  with  marvels,  miracles, 
and  prodigies  ;  but  we  are  intangled  in  a  perfect  network  of 
impossibilities.  In  an  hour  or  two  from  the  time  of  receiving 
the  midnight  order  a  population  of  two  millions  starts,  without 
leaving  one  behind,  together  with  all  their  flocks,  herds,  and 
goods. 

""  Remembering  as  I  do,"  writes  the  Bishop,  "  the  confusion  in 
my  own  household  of  thirty  or  forty  persons  when  once  we 
were  obliged  to  fly  at  dead  of  night — having  been  roused 
from  our  beds  by  a  false  alarm  that  an  invading  Zulu  force 
had  entered  the  colony,  had  evaded  the  English  troops  sent 
to  meet  them,  and  was  making  its  way  direct  for  our  station, 
killing  right  and  left  as  it  came  along — I  do  not  hesitate  to 
declare  this  statement  to  be  utterly  incredible  and  impos- 
sible. Were  an  English  village  of  (say)  two  thousand  people 
to  be  called  suddenly  to  retreat  in  this  way,  with  old  people 


1 862.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  MATTER.  507 

young  children,  and  infants,  what  indescribable  distress 
there  would  be !  But  what  shall  be  said  of  a  thousand 
times  as  many  ?  And  what  of  the  sick  and  infirm,  or  the 
women  in  recent  or  in  imminent  child-birth,  in  a  population 
like  that  of  London,  where  the  births  are  264  a  day,  or  about 
one  every  five  minutes  ? 
"  But  this,"  he  adds,  "  is  but  a  very  small  part  of  the  difficulty. 
We  are  required  to  believe  that  in  one  single  day  the  order 
to  start  was  communicated  suddenly,  at  midnight,  to  every 
single  family  of  every  town  and  village,  throughout  a  tract 
of  country  as  large  as  Hertfordshire,  but  ten  times  as  thickly 
peopled  ;  that  in  obedience  to  such  orders,  having  first 
*  borrowed  '  very  largely  from  their  Egyptian  neighbours  in 
all  directions  (though,  if  we  are  to  assume  Egyptians  oc- 
cupying the  same  territory  with  the  Hebrews,  the  extent  of 
it  must  be  very  much  increased),  they  then  came  in  from 
all  parts  of  the  land  of  Goshen  to  Rameses,  bringing  with 
them  the  sick  and  infirm,  the  young  and  the  aged  ;  further, 
that,  since  receiving  the  summons,  they  had  sent  out  to 
gather  in  all  their  flocks  and  herds,  spread  over  so  wide  a 
district,  and  had  driven  them  also  to  Rameses  ;  and  lastly, 
that,  having  done  all  this,  since  they  were  roused  at  mid- 
night, they  were  started  again  from  Rameses  that  very 
same  day,  and  marched  on  to  Succoth,  not  leaving  a  single 
sick  or  infirm  person,  a  single  woman  in  child-birth,  or 
even  '  a  single  hoof  behind  them."  ^ 

Such  in  all  strictness  is  the  Exodus  story.  Kurtz  felt  and 
admitted  it  to  be  in  many  respects  impossible,  although  of 
its  extravagent  absurdity  he  says  nothing.  He,  an  orthodox 
critic,  writing  to  uphold  the  historical  accuracy  and  veracity 
of  the  Pentateuch,  cannot  bring  himself  to  believe  that  they 
all  meet  at  Rameses,  many  of  them  merely  to  retrace  their 
steps.  Although  the  narrative  says  plainh',  "  the  children  of 
Israel  journeyed  from  Rameses  to  Succoth,  about  six  hundred 
thousand  [warriors]  on  foot,"  he  insists  that  some  only  started 
^  Pe?itateuch,  Part  I.  p.  62. 


5o8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CGLENSO.  chap,  x. 

from  Rameses,  the  rest  joining  them  on  their  road.  The  tale 
speaks  of  a  distance  of  about  sixty  miles  traversed  in  three 
days.     Kurtz  remarks  : — 

"  Others  may  believe  it,  if  they  please.  But  I  cannot  believe 
that  such  a  procession  as  we  have  described  could  keep 
up  a  journey  of  seventeen  or  twenty  miles  a  day  for  three 
days  running.  Even  if  they  only  travelled  three  days,  it 
would  certainly  be  necessary  to  assume,  as  Tischendorf 
does,  that  there  were  periods  of  rest  of  longer  duration — 
that  is,  actual  days  of  rest  between  the  three  marching 
days.  But  had  there  been  any  such  days,  it  can  scarcely 
be  supposed  that  a  narrative  so  minute  would  have  failed 
to  notice  them.  But  we  have  next  to  imagine  this  mighty 
throng  moving  through  the  open  desert ;  let  it  be  granted, 
as  some  have  supposed,  in  a  wide  body,  fifty  men  abreast. 
These,  with  only  a  yard  between  each  rank,  would  form  a 
column  more  than  twenty-two  miles  long,  and  thus,  far 
from  starting  at  one  and  the  same  hour  from  Rameses  or 
from  Succoth,  the  last  of  the  body  could  not  have  stirred 
till  the  first  had  advanced  that  distance,  '  more  than  two 
days'  journey  for  such  a  mixed  company  as  this.' "  ^ 

So  speaking,  we  leave  out  of  sight  the  flocks  and  herds,  the 
first  of  which  might  eat,  while  their  followers  would  certainly 
trample  down,  such  grass  or  herbage  as  might  be  found. 
How  then  were  these  two  millions  of  sheep  and  cattle  sustained 
on  the  march  from  Rameses  to  the  Red  Sea  }  But  let  Kurtz 
have  the  full  benefit  of  the  supposition  that  most  of  them 
joined  the  company  after  the  Hebrews  had  left  Rameses. 
Even  this,  as  the  Bishop  remarks  with  irresistible  logic,  would 
not  affect  the  difficulty  of  so  many  miles  of  people  marching 
with  so  many  miles  of  sheep  and  oxen. 

"  It  would  only  throw  it  on  to  a  further  stage  of  the  journey. 
For  when,  on  the  third  day,   they  turned  aside  and  '  en- 


1  Pentateuch^  Part  I.  p.  64. 


1 862.  -    THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  MATTER.  509 

camped  by  the  sea,'  what  then  did  this  enormous  multitude 
of  cattle  feed  upon  ?  " 

How,  again,  were  they  fed  when  they  had  crossed  to  the 
other  side  ?  The  people,  we  are  told,  were  supplied  with 
manna,  and  might  also  be  sustained  by  their  flocks  and  herds  ; 
but  for  the  latter  there  was  no  extraordinary  provision,  and 
they  were  thus  left  to  live  on  such  fodder  as  they  could  find 
in  the  wilderness,  and  this  for  the  long  space  of  forty  years. 
The  story  precludes  the  notion  that  they  were  scattered  over 
indefinite  tracts  of  country.  The  people  had  to  keep  together 
for  self-defence  ;  and  the  flocks,  if  scattered,  must  have  been 
guarded  by  large  bodies  of  armed  men.  Much  has  been  said 
of  changes  of  climate,  caused  by  disappearance  of  vegetation, 
in  the  Sinaitic  peninsula  ;  but  such  notions  are  not  coun- 
tenanced by  the  old  record.  The  story  describes  the  region 
generally  as  being  then,  what  it  is  now,  "  a  waste  howling 
wilderness,"  a  land  of  "  fiery  serpents,  scorpions,  and  drought," 
where  there  was  "  no  water  to  drink." 

Fully  aware  of  the  difficulties  thus  encountered  on  both 
sides  of  the  question,  Dr.  Stanley  admitted  that  the  main- 
tenance of  the  Israelites  during  their  long  wanderings  could 
not  be  accounted  for  by  a  reference  to  miracles. 

"  Except  the  manna,  the  quails,  and  the  three  interventions 
with  regard  to  water,  none  such,",  he  said,  "  are  mentioned 
in  the  Mosaic  history  ;  and  if  we  have  no  warrant  to  take 
away,  we  have  no  warrant  to  add." 

But,  again,  he  would  not  allow  that  such  difficulties  fur- 
nished a  proof  of  the  unhistorical  character  of  the  narrative  ; 
and  he  appealed  to  Ewald  in  support  of  his  conclusion  that 

*'  the  general  truth  of  the  wanderings  in  the  wilderness  is  an 
essential  preliminary  to  the  whole  of  the  subsequent  history 
of  Israel." 

The  Bishop  replied   that,  though  Ewald   had   asserted,  he 


5IO  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

had  failed  to  show,  this  ;  that  the  story  of  the  Exodus  is  as 
much  out  of  harmony  with  some  parts  of  the  later  history  as 
it  is  in  harmony  with  others,  and  that  it  is  at  the  least  pos- 
sible that  the  latter  also  may  turn  out  to  be  unhistorical. 
Dr.  Stanley  fell  back,  further,  on  a  supposed  spread  of  the 
Hebrews  "  far  and  wide  through  the  whole  peninsula,"  and 
"  on  the  constant  means  of  support  from  their  own  flocks  and 
herds."  The  latter  point  may  be  admitted,  the  real  question 
being  how  the  cattle  were  supported,  the  narrative  saying 
nothing  about  any  dispersal  of  the  people,  and  distinctly 
implying  that  they  had  to  keep  together  everywhere.  He 
adduced  the  further  fact  that  a  population  nearly,  if  not 
quite,  equal  to  the  whole  permanent  population  of  the  penin- 
sula, passes  yearly  through  the  desert  on  the  way  to  and 
from  Mecca.  But  the  caravan  of  pilgrims  numbers  about 
five  thousand,  and  carries  ample  stores  on  the  backs  of 
camels.  The  Hebrew  population  numbered  two  millions, 
and  had  hurried  out  of  Eg}-pt  without  "  having  prepared  for 
themselves  any  victual,"  and  had  no  means  of  carrying  food, 
if  they  had  it.^  The  caravan  passes  through  with  all  prac- 
ticable speed :  the  Hebrews  remained  a  year  in  one  most 
desolate  spot,  and  spent  forty  years  in  wandering  through 
other  parts  of  the  desert.  They  were  encumbered  with  vast 
herds,  needing  daily  supplies  of  water :  the  caravan  hurries 
along  with  camels  which  can  go  for  days  without  drinking. 
The  reference  to  some  climatic  changes  in  the  peninsula  is, 
as  we  have  seen,  still  more  desperate.  Whatever  change 
there  may  have  been,  the  story  of  the  Exodus  speaks  of  it 
as  being  then,  what  it  is  now,  "  an  evil  place,"  without  fruits, 
without  crops,  without  Avater.  Groves  of  acacia-trees  ma}' 
have  disappeared  in  the  wadys  or  winter-torrent  courses, 
and  the  lessening  or  concentration  of  the  rainfall  may  have 
contracted  somewhat  the  scanty  area  of  grass  ;  but  the  differ- 
^  Pe7itaiciich,  Part  I.  p.  71. 


1 862.  '  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  MATTER.  5ri 


ence  would  be  inappreciable,  when  the  question  afifects  the 
sustenance  of  millions.  The  monks  of  St.  Catharine  have 
created  a  paradise  of  flowers,  fruit,  and  grass.  But  the  para- 
dise extends  over  some  four  or  five  acres,  and  has  been  the 
work  of  centuries  ;  and  the  attempt  to  explain  the  sustenance 
of  a  mighty  multitude  at  a  moment's  notice  on  the  stony 
soil  of  the  plain  beneath  Sinai  by  the  results  of  unremitting 
labour  applied  to  a  small  garden  is  absurd.  It  is  more  to  the 
purpose  to  refer  to  the  Amalekites.  There  is  no  proof  that 
they  lived  in  the  Sinaitic  desert,  which  Jeremiah  describes  as 
"  a  land  that  no  man  passed  through  and  where  no  man 
dwelt."  There  is,  indeed,  the  ruined  city  of  Petra  ;  but  Petra 
is  in  an  oasis,  not  in  the  wilderness.  As  he  approached  it^ 
Stanley  found  that  he  had  "suddenly  left  the  desert." 

"  Instead  of  the  absolute  nakedness  of  the  Sinaitic  valleys, 
we  found  ourselves  walking  on  grass  sprinkled  with  flowers, 
and  the  level  platforms  on  each  side  were  filled  with 
sprouting  corn." 

But  compared  with  the  population  of  the  Israelites  that  of 
Petra  was  nothing.  That  a  writer  so  able  and  earnest  as 
Stanley  would  say  all  that  could  be  said  to  uphold  the  general 
trustworthiness  of  the  Mosaic  narrative,  we  may  be  sure  ; 
but  he  was  too  candid  to  withhold  the  confession  that,  though 
these  considerations  might  mitigate  the  force  of  the  difficulty, 
they  failed  to  solve  it.  To  how  slight  an  extent  they  even 
mitigate  it,  it  can  scarcely  be  necessary  to  say.  Nor  need  we 
dwell  on  the  ridiculous  supposition  that  near  the  populous 
Mount  Seir  they  must  come  into  intercourse  with  rich  nations 
and  tribes  who  would  supply  them  easil}-  with  all  the  neces- 
saries of  life.  The  tribes  would  at  the  outside  be  numbered 
by  a  few  thousands  ;  and  we  have  to  picture  to  ourselves  one 
or  two  myriads  supplying  the  needs  of  millions.  The  cattle 
must  be  thought  of  almost  more  than  the  people,  who,  though 


512  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

they  might  in  part  hve  on  their  flocks,  could  not  buy  grass  or 
other  food  for  them.  Such  hypotheses  may  be  indefinitely 
multiplied  ;  but  every  hypothesis  will  do  violence  more  or 
less  to  plain  statements  of  the  narrative.  There  remains 
another  difficulty.  The  Israelites  were  under  Sinai  for  nearly 
a  year,  and  they  kept  the  second  Passover  there  in  the  first 
month  of  their  ecclesiastical  year,  March-April,  when  the 
weather  is  bitterly  cold.  Whence  did  the  people  at  this  time 
obtain  fuel,  not  merely  for  their  daily  cooking,  but  also  for 
warmth  ?  and  how,  under  such  circumstances,  were  the  cattle 
saved  from  cold  and  starvation  ? 

This  nation  with  its  vast  mass  of  600,000  warriors  had  been 
told  that  their  mission  was  to  displace  the  tribes  of  Canaan  ; 
but  before  they  emerged  from  the  desert  they  received  a 
Divine  assurance  that  hornets  should  drive  out  these  tribes 
before  them  ;  that  the  work  of  expulsion  should  be  done 
gradually,  till  the  increase  in  their  own  numbers  should  enable 
them  to  inherit  the  land,  the  reason  for  not  expelling  them 
in  a  single  year  being  the  fear  that  otherwise  the  land  might 
become  desolate  and  the  beasts  of  the  field  multiply  against 
the  new  comers.  But,  according  to  the  Pentateuch  story,  the 
inheritance  of  the  twelve  tribes,  east  and  west  of  Jordan, 
covered  about  seven  millions  of  acres.  The  acreage  of  Nor- 
folk, Suffolk,  and  Essex,  is  about  half  this  quantity,  and 
their  population  in  185 1  was  somewhat  under  1,150,000 — not 
greater,  therefore,  in  proportion  than  that  of  the  Israelites 
on  their  entering  Canaan,  without  reckoning  the  Canaanites, 
who  are  described  as  seven  nations,  greater  and  mightier  than 
Israel  itself. 

"  Surely,"  remarks  the  Bishop,  "  it  cannot  be  said  that  these 
three  eastern  counties,  with  their  flourishing  towns    .... 
are  in  any  danger  of  their  lying  '  desolate,'  with  the  beasts 
of  the  field  multiplying  against  the  human  inhabitants."  ^ 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  I.  p.  83. 


1 862.  THE  PENT  A  TE  UCH :     ITS  MA  TTER.  5 1 3 

But  the  colony  of  Natal  has  an  extent  of  18,000  square 
miles,  with  a  population,  black  and  white  included,  which  in 
1861-62  did  not  greatly  exceed  150,000.  The  numbers  are 
scanty,  and  the  land  could  bear  vastly  more  ;  but  the  human 
inhabitants  thirty  years  ago  were  well  able  to  hold  their  ground 
against  the  beasts  of  the  field,  few  of  which  could  now  be 
seen,  while  lions,  elephants,  and  other  species  which  had  once 
abounded  in  the  country,  have  long  since  disappeared. 

"  Natal,  in  fact,  should  have  a  population  of  three  millions,  in 
order  to  be  compared  for  density  of  population  with  the 
land  of  Canaan,  according  to  the  story,  after  the  entrance 
of  the  Israelites,  without  reckoning  the  old  inhabitants." 

The  truth  is  that,  without  going  further,  we  are  dealing 
with  records,  which,  regarded  strictly  as  historical  narratives, 
are  wholly  worthless.  Whatever  moral  and  spiritual  beauty 
they  may  exhibit,  whatever  righteous  lessons  or  warnings 
they  may  inforce,  remains  unaffected  by  the  investigation  ; 
but  the  authority  of  the  book  as  a  history  is  reduced  to  a 
level  not  much  higher  than  that  of  the  beautiful  apologue  of 
Prodikos  which  describes  the  trial  and  testing  of  the  youthful 
Herakles  by  Kakia  and  Arete.  But  although  we  have  ample 
grounds  already  for  setting  down  the  narratives  of  the  Penta- 
teuch generally  as  untrustworthy,  the  perplexities  connected 
with  these  stories  are  far  from  having  been  fully  enumerated. 
Thus  for  the  huge  total  of  two  million  Israelites  all  the  first- 
born males  from  a  month  old  and  upwards  are  given  as 
2,273,  ^rid  these  are  distinctly  named  as  firstborns  on  the 
mother's  side,  the  proportion  to  the  whole  number  of  males 
being  as  i  to  42. 

"In  other  words,  the  number  of  boys  in  every  family  must 
have  been  on  the  average  forty-two,  and  each  woman 
who  became  a  mother  must  have  been  the  mother  of  this 
number  of  sons." 

VOL.  I.  L  L 


514  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xJ 

It  is  scarcely  worth  while  to  go  through  the  attempts  at 
reconciliation  or  explanation  ofifered  for  statements  which 
imply  that  there  were  only  60,000  child-bearing  women  to 
600,000  men,  so  that  only  one  man  in  ten  could  have  a  wife 
and  children.  Of  orthodox  critics  some  urge  the  prevalence, 
others  the  rarity,  of  polygamy,  as  helping  us  to  account  for 
these  assertions.  But  the  inquiry  sends  us  now  further  afield. 
That  the  period  of  430  years  assigned  for  the  sojourning  or 
pilgrimage  of  the  children  of  Israel  is  to  be  reckoned  from  the 
time  of  the  covenant  made  with  Abraham  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  The  time  spent  in  Egypt  after  the  descent  of  Jacob 
and  his  family  would  thus  be  215  years.  This  conclusion 
removes  some  astounding  perplexities,  for,  if  we  take  the  430 
years  as  the  actual  sojourn  in  Egypt, 

"  Moses,  who  was  eighty  years  old  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus, 
must  have  been  born  350  years  after  the  migration  into 
Egypt,  when  his  mother  .  .  .  must  have  been  at  the  very 
least  256  years  old."  ^ 

The  shorter  period  is  more  in  harmony  with  the  narrative, 
which,  as  a  rule,  gives  the  contemporaries  of  Moses  and  Aaron 
as  descendants  in  the  third,  and  those  of  Joshua  and  Eleazar 
as  descendants  in  the  fourth,  generation  from  some  one  of  the 
sons  or  grandsons  of  Jacob,  who  went  down  with  him  into 
Egypt.  But  the  comment  involved  in  these  statements  on  the 
value  of  other  parts  of  the  narrative  is  amazing  indeed.  The 
twelve  sons  of  Jacob  are  said  to  have  had  between  them  fifty- 
three  sons,  or  an  average  of  four  and  a  half  to  each. 

"  Let  us  suppose,"  the  Bishop  writes,  "  that  they  increased  in 
this  way  from  generation  to  generation.  Then  in  the  first 
generation,  that  of  Kohath,  there  would  be  fifty-four  males  ; 
in  the  second,  that  of  Amram,  243  ;  in  the  third,  that  of 
Moses  and  Aaron,  1,094  ;  and  in  the  fourth,  that  of  Joshua 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  I.  p.  93. 


1 862.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  MATTER.  515 

and  Eleazar,  4,923  :  that  is  to  say,  instead  of  600,000  war- 
riors in  the  prime  of  hfe,  there  could  not  have  been  5,000. 
Further,  if  the  numbers  of  all  the  males  in  the  four  genera- 
tions be  added  together  (which  supposes  that  they  were  all 
living  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus),  they  would  only  amount 
to  6,31 1.  If  we  even  add  to  them  the  numbers  of  the  fifth 
generation,  22,154,  who  would  be  mostly  children,  the  sum 
total  of  males  of  all  generations  could  not,  according  to  these 
data,  have  exceeded  28,465,  instead  of  being  1,000,000."  ^ 

A  further  examination  of  the  genealogical  records  reveals 
still  greater  extravagance.  In  Genesis  xlvi.  23,  Dan  is  spoken 
of  as  having  one  son.  In  Numbers  xxiii.  42,  the  sons  of  Dan 
consist  of  only  one  family.  Dan,  therefore,  had  no  more  sons 
born  to  him  in  Egypt.  He  would  thus  in  the  fourth  genera- 
tion have  had  twenty-seven  warriors  descended  from  him  ; 
but  in  Numbers  ii.  26,  they  are  given  as  62,700,  and  in  xxvi.  43, 
as  64,000.  Yet  more,  these  descendants  of  the  one  son  of  Dan 
are  represented  as  nearly  double  the  number  of  the  ten  sons  of 
Benjamin.  The  factors  relating  to  the  family  of  Levi  give 
similar  results.  How  are  they  to  be  dealt  with  }  The  problem 
is  one  of  hopeless  difficulty,  and  the  efforts  to  solve  it  are  not 
less  desperate.  Kurtz  insists  that  Abraham  and  those  who 
came  after  him  all  had  hundreds,  if  not  thousands,  of  servants, 
who,  as  being  circumcised,  w^ere  reckoned  as  his  family,  and 
that  in  Egypt  his  own  immediate  descendants  intermarried 
with  these  servants.  But  with  all  such  hypotheses  the  narrative 
of  the  Pentateuch  is  altogether  in  conflict.  Nothing  is  said 
of  this  multitude  of  dependents  as  going  down  with  Jacob 
into  Egypt.  Jacob  has  none  such  when  he  meets  with  his 
brother  Esau.  If  he  had  possessed  them,  would  he  have  sent 
his  darling  son  Joseph,  at  seventeen  years  of  age,  to  wander 
alone  and  unattended  in  search  of  his  brothers  ?  His  brothers, 
again,  are  mentioned  as  feeding  their  flocks  unattended  ;  and 

1  Pentateuch^  Part  I.  p.  103. 

L  L  2 


5i6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

indeed  the  presence  of  bands  of  servants  would  have  been 
highly  inconvenient  for  the  execution  of  their  designs  against 
Joseph.  Nothing  is  said  of  servants  accompanying  the  sons 
of  Jacob  when  they  go  to  buy  corn  in  Egypt.  On  the  con- 
trary, each  man  has  his  ass,  and  when  they  find  their  money 
in  their  sacks,  their  fear  is  that  Joseph  will  confiscate  their 
beasts,  but  they  make  no  mention  of  any  servants.  They  had, 
moreover,  eleven  asses,  and  eleven  sacks  ;  and  the  contents  of 
these  sacks  would  have  yielded  but  scanty  support  for  many 
starving  thousands.  The  comments  and  explanations  which 
deal  with  these  perplexities  are  vain  attempts  to  tear  down 
the  walls  of  a  prison-house  with  the  bare  hand. 

These  difficulties  of  inconsistency,  downright  contradiction, 
and  impossibility,  are  interwoven  with  the  whole  texture  of 
the  Pentateuch  records.  The  Levitical  legislation,  purporting 
to  be  drawn  up  specially  for  the  people  during  their  sojourn  in 
the  desert,  assumes  that  they  are  to  be  numbered  by  millions. 
But  the  entrance  to  the  tabernacle  is,  as  we  have  seen,  so  narrow 
that  scarcely  nine  men  could  stand  abreast  in  front  of  it  ;  and 
the  number  of  the  priests,  after  the  death  of  Nadab  and 
x^bihu,  is  only  three.  For  each  birth  there  was  to  be  a  burnt- 
offering  and  a  sin-offering  ;  and  as  the  births  for  such  a  popu- 
lation would  be  250  daily,  500  sacrifices  would  have  to  be 
offered  up  each  day  on  this  account  alone.  The  rules  show 
that  scarcely  less  than  five  minutes  could  be  allowed  for  each 
sacrifice  ;  and  if  these  offerings  were  taken  separately,  they 
would  occupy  not  a  single  day  of  twelve  hours,  but  forty-two 
hours  consecutively.  The  notion  of  many  simultaneous  offer- 
ings receives  no  countenance  from  the  statements  of  the 
Pentateuch,  and  there  was  but  one  altar,  about  nine  feet  square, 
on  which,  therefore,  not  many  victims  could  be  placed  together. 
These  victims  might  be  lambs  or  pigeons  ;  and  the  latter  are 
permitted  as  a  lighter  and  easier  offering  for  the  poor  to  bring 
during  their  sojourn  in  the  wilderness.     "  They  are,  therefore, 


1 862.  THE  PENT  A  TE  UCH :    ITS  MA  TTER.  5 1 7 

spoken  of  as  being  in  abundance,  as  being  within  the  reach  of 
every  one,  in  the  Avilderness  under  Sinai."  ^  It  is  absolutely 
impossible  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  these  enactments  were 
framed  at  some  time  when,  and  some  place  where,  it  would 
really  be  a  boon  to  the  poor  to  allow  them  to  offer  pigeons 
instead  of  lambs  ;  but  the  time  was  not  that  of  the  sojourn 
in  the  desert,  nor  was  the  place  the  peninsula  of  Sinai.  Doves, 
indeed,  are  supposed  to  be  birds  of  the  wilderness  ;  but  the 
wilderness  is,  probably,  that  of  Judah,  not  the  stony  wastes 
of  Arabia.  If,  however,  by  such  pleas  we  fancy  for  a  moment 
that  we  have  escaped,  or  at  least  lessened,  one  difficulty,  it  is 
only  to  find  ourselves  face  to  face  with  another.  The  priests 
were  enjoined  to  eat  the  sin-offerings  in  the  most  holy  place- 
There  were  but  three  of  them,  and  the  number  of  the  offerings 
would  be  264  daily.  Each,  therefore,  would  have  to  devour 
eighty-eight  pigeons  every  day.  To  the  priests  also  belong  the 
first-born  of  all  cattle  ;  and  these  would  be  reckoned  by 
hundreds  of  thousands  yearly.  What  were  three  priests  to 
do  with  such  an  inheritance  .''  The  requirements  on  theit 
powers  during  the  feast  of  the  Passover  were  on  a  scale  vastly 
more  gigantic.  At  the  second  Passover,  under.  Sinai,  150,000 
lambs  were  killed,  it  would  seem,  between  the  two  evenings  ; 
that  is,  between  the  setting  of  the  sun  and  the  closing  in  of 
actual  night.  In  other  words,  in  about  two  hours  each  priest 
had  to  sprinkle  the  blood  of  50,000  lambs,  at  the  rate  of  400 
lambs  every  minute.  But  where  were  these  animals  slain  .'' 
The  court  of  the  tabernacle,  when  thronged  most  densely, 
Avould  not  have  held  more  than  5000  people  ;  and  how  then 

"  are  we  to  conceive  1 50,000  lambs  being  killed  within  it  by 
at  least  150,000  people,  at  the  rate  of  1,250  lambs  a 
minute  } "  ^ 

Any  slight  reduction,  based  on  the  calculation  that  a  lamb 
^  Pentateuch^  Part  I.  p.  125.  -  /^.  p.  132. 


5i8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

may  have  sufficed  for  twenty  people,  instead  of  for  eight  or 
ten,  has  no  appreciable  effect  on  the  difficulty.  The  amount 
of  slaughtering  and  sprinkling  to  be  done  remains  an  absolute 
impossibility.  Kurtz  tries  to  get  out  of  the  snare  by  saying 
that  "  the  place  which  Jehovah  shall  choose  to  place  His 
Name  there  "  means  not  the  sanctuary  but  the  city  or  camp, 
within  which  the  sanctuary  was  situated — in  other  words, 
that,  so  long  as  they  were  anywhere  within  the  limits  of  this 
city  or  camp,  each  father  of  a  family  might  offer  the  lamb 
for  his  household  within  his  own  tent.  But  the  narrative  of 
the  Pentateuch  gives  no  warrant  for  any  such  supposition  ; 
and  in  the  Book  of  Leviticus  it  is  expressly  commanded  that 
all  burnt-offerings,  peace-offerings,  sin-offerings,  trespass- 
offerings,  shall  be  killed  "  at  the  door  of  the  tabernacle  of  the 
congregation,  and  the  blood  be  sprinkled  upon  the  altar 
round  about." 

Nor  do  we  move  more  freely  when  we  pass  from  the  region 
of  ceremonial  enactments  to  incidents  of  the  popular  history. 
We  have  seen  that  the  enormous  numbers  of  the  Israelites 
are  made  up  from  different  sets  of  factors,  all  of  which  yield 
as  nearly  as  possible  the  same  results.  The  factors,  therefore, 
have  been  as  deliberately  framed  as  the  totals  ;  and  we  cannot, 
then,  take  these  totals  as  mere  Eastern  superlatives,  as  we 
certainly  may  when  we  are  told  that  David  slew  40,000 
Syrian  horsemen  ;  or  that  Pekah  slew  in  one  day  1 20,000  *'  sons 
of  valour  "  of  the  kingdom  of  Judah  ;  or  that  the  men  of  Judah, 
fighting  with  Jeroboam  II.,  smote  down  of  his  warriors 
500,000  chosen  men.  The  Bishop  is  thus  more  than  justified 
in  saying — he  was  bound  to  say — that  these  numbers  were 
woven  as  a  thread  into  the  whole  story  of  the  Exodus,  and 
cannot  be  taken  out  without  tearing  the  whole  fabric  to 
pieces.  He  was  justified  also  in  expressing  thankfulness 
"  that  we  are  no  longer  obliged  to  believe,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
of  vital  consequence  to  our  eternal  hope,  the  story  of   the 


1 862  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  MATTER.  519 

Midianitish  war."^  The  obligation  had  sprung  simply  from 
the  hypothesis  or  assumption  of  the  perfect  veracity  of  the 
Mosaic  history  ;  with  the  fall  of  the  hypothesis  the  supposed 
duty  fades  away. 

A  few  minds  might,  it  is  true,  put  aside  the  obligation  as 
imaginary  and  unreal  ;  but  the  idea  that  there  was  such  an 
obligation  had  exercised  a  most  injurious  influence  on  many. 
It  had  led  Bishop  Butler  to  urge  that  particular  acts,  which 
would  otherwise  be  in  the  highest  degree  immoral,  ceased 
to  be  immoral  under  a  Divine  commission  to  do  them.  It 
had  led  Dr.  Arnold  to  regard  robbery,  pillage,  burning,  and 
massacre,  as  a  merciful  recompense  to  the  Canaanites,  who 
would  be  swept  away  to  make  room  for  tribes  who  are 
described  as  being  not  much,  if  at  all,  better  than  they.  It 
had  led  to  gross  blasphemies  against  the  Divine  Nature, 
which  was  represented  as  sanctioning  in  one  age  or  country 
that  which  was  condemned  or  prohibited  in  another.  But 
all  these  curious  pleadings  vanish  into  air  when  we  really 
look  into  the  story  and  there  find 

"that  12,000  Israelites  slew  all  the  males  of  the  Midianites, 
took  captive  all  the  females  and  children,  seized  all  their 
cattle  and  flocks  (72,000  oxen,  61,000  asses,  675,000  sheep) 
and  all  their  goods,  and  burnt  all  their  cities  and  all  their 
goodly  castles,  without  the  loss  of  one  single  man,  and  then 
by  command  of  Moses  butchered  in  cold  blood  all  the 
women  and  children  " 

with  the  exception  of  32,000  girls  who  were  kept  as  prizes  for 
the  conquerors.  This  alone  is  enough  to  show  that  we  are 
reading  a  narrative  whose  veracity  may  be  put  much  on  the 

^  In  a  despatch  dated  November  16,  1878,  Sir  Bartle  Frerc  urged  as  a 
plea  for  the  raids  and  incroachments  of  the  Boers  against  the  Zulus  that 
the  former  had  "  a  sincere  belief  in  the  Divine  authority  for  what  they 
did,"  based  upon  "  the  old  commands  which  they  found  in  parts  of  their 
Bible  to  exterminate  the  Gentiles  and  take  their  lands  in  possession." 


520  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 


same  level  with  that  of  the  story  of  Ali  Baba  and  the  Forty 
Thieves  ;  and  it  becomes  a  superfluous,  as  it  is  assuredly  a 
loathsome,  task,  when  we  turn  to  calculate  the  numbers 
thus  slaughtered,  and  find  that  they  amount  to  48,000  women 
and  (say)  20,000  boys,  and  that  to  these  must  be  added  a 
like  number  of  men  put  to  death,  all  this  being  done  by 
12,000  Israelites,  who  must,  further,  have  carried  off  100,000 
captives,  eight  at  least  to  each  man,  and  driven  before  them 
at  the  same  time  808,000  head  of  cattle.  In  dealing  with 
horrors,  as  compared  with  which  the  tragedy  of  Cawnpore  sinks 
into  nothing,  it  is  satisfactory  to  find  that  the  chronology  of  the 
campaign  is  as  impossible  as  are  its  incidents.  Aaron  died, 
we  are  told,  on  the  first  day  of  the  fifth  month  of  the  fortieth 
year  of  the  wanderings,  the  year  also  of  the  Midianitish 
expedition.  During  the  month  of  mourning  which  followed 
his  death  nothing  was  done.  For  the  war  in  which  they  then 
engaged  with  the  Midianitish  king  Arad  another  month 
probably  must  be  allowed,  and  a  fortnight  at  least  for  the 
journey  from  Mount  Hor,  by  the  way  of  the  Red  Sea,  to 
compass  the  land  of  Edom,  when  they  were  plagued  with 
fier}-  serpents  and  Moses  set  up  a  serpent  of  brass.  The  nine 
encampments  next  mentioned  must  have  taken  up  another 
month,  while  another  must  be  allowed  for  the  crushing  of 
the  Amorite  king  Sihon  and  the  destruction  of  all  his  cities. 
Scarcely  less  than  a  fortnight  would  have  been  taken  up  with 
spying  out  Jaazer  and  driving  thence  the  Amorites,  and 
another  month  for  the  destruction  of  Og,  king  of  Bashan,  with 
all  his  cities  and  all  his  people,  not  one  being  left  alive.  This 
computation  brings  us  to  the  first  day  of  the  eleventh  month, 
the  very  day  on  which  Moses  is  said  to  have  addressed  the 
people  in  the  plains  of  Moab.  But  into  this  period  must  be, 
further,  crowded  the  following  events :  the  march  to  the  plains 
of  Moab,  the  journeys  and  prophesyings  of  Balaam,  the  sojourn 
of  Israel  in  Shittim  with  its  attendant  debauchery,  the  death 


THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  MATTER. 


of   24,000    by    the    plague,  the    second  numbering,  and    the 
Midianitish  war. 

The  picture  revealed  to  us  by  this  examination  of  the 
Mosaic  narrative  is,  indeed,  astonishing,  and  furnishes  a 
marvellous  comment  on  the  words  which  the  Bishop  cites 
from  its  orthodox  defender  Havernick. 

"  If  the  Pentateuch  would  fully  maintain  its  right  to  the 
position  which  it  claims  as  the  work  of  Moses  and  the 
commencement  of  the  sacred  records  of  the  covenant  people, 
it  must  fulfil  the  requisition  of  showing  itself  to  be  a  work 
Jiistorically  true — containing  a  history  which  shall  vindicate 
itself  by  critical  examination,  as  maintaining  invariably 
the  character  of  perfect  truth  in  reference  to  the  assumed 
period  of  its  composition." 

Instead  of  this,  we  find  a  series  of  incidents  absolutely  im- 
possible in  themselves,  a  series  of  narratives  which  contradict 
or  exclude  each  other,  and  a  reckoning  of  population  in  which 
several  sets  of  factors  have  been  very  deliberately  framed  to 
suit  certain  preconceived  totals.  We  have,  further,  a  history 
which,  professing  to  tell  us  of  wanderings  spread  over  forty 
years,  is  absolutely  silent  about  thirty-seven  of  those  years,  and 
thus  leads  us  to  think  that  the  forty  years  are  as  little  to  be 
depended  on  as  the  numbers,  armour,  and  weapons  of  the 
600,000  warriors  who  march  from  Rameses.  In  this  mighty 
labyrinth  of  contradictions  and  impossibilities  nothing  has 
been  said  as  to  the  suspicions  which  must  attach  to  the  ages 
reached  by  patriarchs  and  others.  We  have  no  warrant 
whatever  for  the  fancy  that  the  duration  of  human  life  has 
diminished  or  that  it  ever  was  greater  than  it  is  now  ;  and 
this  suspicion  throws  additional  uncertainty  over  not  merely 
a  part,  but  the  whole,  of  the  history.  There  is,  lastly,  the 
obscurity  attaching  to  the  whole  of  the  Egyptian  sojourn. 
Where  or  what  was  Goshen  .-^       It  lay  far  away  to  the  cast  of 


522  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

the  river,  and  formed  the  best  or  fat  of  the  land  ;  but  in  the 
country  known  to  us  as  Egypt,  the  only  fertile  part  is  the 
strip  affected  by  the  annual  inundations.  This  strip  has  no 
pasture ;  and  the  Israelites  were  strictly  herdsmen.  From 
Herodotus  it  would  seem  that  the  region  commonly  known  as 
Goshen  was  in  his  time,  and  had  always  been,  little  better  than 
a  salt  marsh.  The  Misraim  of  the  Pentateuch  is  a  country  of 
horses  and  horsemen  :  Egypt  had  none.  The  former  had 
lions  :  the  latter  had  none.  In  the  former  the  tillage  is  de- 
scribed as  that  of  laborious  hand  work  with  artificial  irrigation  : 
in  Egypt  the  work  was  done  by  the  river.  The  contrast 
might  be  carried  much  further  ;  and  perhaps  at  the  worst  it 
may  show  only  that  the  compilers  of  the  narrative  were  but 
little  acquainted  with  the  country  Avhich  they  were  professing 
to  describe.  But  we  may  fairly  suspect  that  there  are  diffi- 
culties in  quarters  where  we  may  be  least  disposed  to  look 
for  them,  and  all  of  them  force  us  to  the  same  conclusion  that 
throughout  the  narrative  of  the  Pentateuch  we  have  no  firm 
standing-ground. 

But  the  very  discrepancies  which  run  through  these  books, 
as  they  have  come  down  to  us,  are  of  themselves  conclusive 
evidence  that  the  books  are  not  the  work  of  one  hand.  It  is^ 
quite  impossible  that  one  and  the  same  man  should  at  the 
same  time  write  off  a  story  which  describes  in  parts  the 
doings  of  a  scanty  band,  and  in  others  the  doings  of  an  im- 
mense multitude  or  even  nation.  The  600,000  warriors, 
implying  a  population  of  at  least  two  millions,  were  not  called 
into  being  by  the  man  who  speaks  of  a  clan  or  tribe  with 
three  priests,  a  tabernacle  with  a  length  and  breadth  of 
only  a  few  feet,  and  a  court  capable  of  accommodating, 
when  most  densely  thronged,  only  some  four  or  five  thousand 
persons.  If  then  the  books,  as  we  now  have  them,  are  com- 
posite, it  is  quite  certain  that  the  story  which  speaks  of  the 
Hebrews  in  Egypt  as  a  v^ery  small  societ}'  of  slav^es  must  be 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  MATTER.  523 

much  older  than  the  record  which  represents  them  as  a 
mighty  people.  It  becomes,  therefore,  not  less  certain  that, 
whatever  portions  may  be  the  writing  of  Moses,  he  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  more  pretentious  descriptions  ;  in  other  words, 
that  he  can  have  been  concerned  at  the  most  with  a  very  small 
portion  of  the  Pentateuch.  Were  it  otherwise,  we  should  have 
to  charge  him  with  deliberate  falsification  in  the  numbering 
of  the  tribes  and  in  all  the  records  which  are  affected  by  this 
numbering.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  had  nothing  to  do  with 
these  later  additions,  all  that  we  need  necessarily  to  conclude 
is  that  the  original  narrative,  whatever  it  may  have  been,  was 
not  regarded  by  the  later  compilers  as  possessing  a  character 
too  sacred  to  allow  of  their  meddling  with  it.  In  their  hands 
the  earlier  traditions  have  undergone  a  treatment  precisely 
corresponding  to  that  of  the  old  Greek  or  Roman  traditions 
which  have  been  moulded  into  the  narratives  of  Herodotus 
or  Livy. 

The  contradictions  in  the  story  of  the  Pentateuch  lead, 
therefore,  directly  to  questions  of  authorship  ;  and  to  these 
the  Bishop  had  to  address  himself  in  the  second  and  the 
subsequent  portions  of  his  work.  There  surely  can  be  no 
need  even  to  state  that  no  one,  having  finished  one  account 
of  any  incident  or  event,  would  go  on  without  the  break  of  a 
line  to  give  another  and  a  totally  different  account  of  the 
same  event.  Yet  this  is  just  what  we  find  in  the  first  two 
chapters  of  the  Book  of  Genesis — in  other  words,  in  the  two 
accounts  of  the  Creation.  On  almost  every  point  the  two 
narratives  contradict  each  other.  In  the  first,  the  earth 
emerges  from  the  waters,  and  is  therefore  saturated  with 
moisture  :  in  the  second,  the  whole  face  of  the  ground  is  dry 
and  needs  to  be  moistened.  In  the  first,  the  birds  and  beasts 
are  created  before  man  :  in  the  second,  man  comes  before  the 
birds  and  beasts.  In  the  first,  all  fowls  that  fly  are  made  out 
of  the  waters  :  in  the  second,  they  are  made  out  of  the  ground. 


524  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  x 

In  the  first,  man  is  created  in  the  image  of  God  :  in  the  second, 
he  is  made  of  the  dust  of  the  ground  and  is  merely  animated 
with  the  breath  of  hfe  ;  and  only  after  his  disobedience  God 
is  represented  as  saying,  "  The  man  has  become  as  one  of  us, 
to  know  good  and  evil."  In  the  first,  man  is  made  lord  of 
the  whole  earth  :  in  the  second,  he  is  merely  placed  in  the 
garden  to  dress  and  to  keep  it.  But  more  particularly,  in 
the  first,  man  and  woman  are  created  together, 

"  as  the  closing  and  completing  work  of  the  whole  Creation — 
created  also,  it  is  evidently  implied,  in  the  same  kind  of 
way,  to  be  the  complement  of  one  another.  In  the  second, 
the  beasts  and  birds  are  created  betzveen  the  man  and  the 
woman.  First,  the  man  is  made,  of  the  dust  of  the  ground  : 
he  is  placed  by  Jiiinselfm  the  garden,  charged  with  a  solemn 
command,  and  threatened  with  a  curse  if  he  breaks  it ; 
then  the  beasts  and  birds  are  made,  and  the  man  gives 
names  to  them  ;  and  lastly,  after  all  this,  the  woman  is 
made,  out  of  one  of  his  ribs,  but  merely  as  a  helpmate  for 
the  man."  ^ 

Two  narratives  in  more  pointed  antagonism  could  scarcely 
be  found  anywhere.  They  cannot,  therefore,  come  from  the 
same  hand.  But  on  looking  further  we  see  that  in  the  first 
narrative  the  Creator  is  always  spoken  of  by  the  name  Elohim, 
in  the  second  always  as  Jehovah-Elohim,  except  in  one  pas- 
sage only,  iii.  i,  3,  8,  where  the  writer  seems  to  abstain,  for 
some  reason,  from  placing  the  name  "  Jehovah  "  in  the  mouth 
of  the  serpent. 

Contradictions  of  the  same  kind  may  be  seen  in  the 
accounts  of  the  Deluge.  In  the  one,  two  of  every  sort  of 
beasts,  birds,  cattle,  creeping  things,  are  to  enter  the  ark : 
in  the  other,  the  number  two  is  confined  to  unclean  beasts, 
while  all  other  creatures  are  to  be  taken  by  sevens.  But 
here  too  we  find  that  the  former  account  exhibits  only 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  172. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  MATTER.  525 


Elohim  ;  the  other  has  Jehovah  as  well  as  Elohim,  though 
not  the  compound  form  Jehovah-Elohim.  We  thus  have,  at 
least,  two  writers,  the  Elohist  and  the  Jehovist,  of  whom  the 
former  is  manifestly  the  older.  The  noting  of  these  facts 
leads  us  to  mark,  further,  certain  peculiarities  of  these  writers. 
Thus  the  Elohist  uses  the  expression  El  Shaddai,  "  Almighty 
God,"  which  the  Jehovist  never  employs.  The  latter 
repeatedly  uses  Israel  as  a  personal  name  for  Jacob  :  the 
Elohist  never.  So,  again,  where  the  Elohist  speaks  of  Padan 
or  Padan-Aram,  the  later  writer  speaks  always  of  Aram- 
Naharaim.  That  the  Elohistic  document,  as  compared  with 
the  later  additions,  is  one  of  very  considerable  antiquity,  we 
may  most  reasonably  infer  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  it  was  not 
regarded  by  the  later  writer,  or  writers,  with  any  exaggerated 
or  superstitious  reverence.  They  dealt  with  it,  manifestly, 
as  they  pleased.  What,  then,  is  the  ultimate  conclusion  .'' 
Clearly  this,  at  least,  that  Moses  was  not  the  later  of  these 
two  writers.  But  is  Moses  himself  an  historical  character? 
In  great  likelihood,  yes.  Traditions  relating  to  his  career 
as  a  deliverer  of  his  countrymen  out  of  captivity  recorded, 
beyond  doubt,  the  profound  impression  made  on  the  national 
mind  by  the  circumstances  of  that  deliverance,^  and  we  may 
well  believe  that  the  lessons  taught  by  that  simple  narrative 
may  have  been  to  the  full  as  striking,  instructive,  and  edify- 
ing as  any  of  those  which  Mr.  Maurice  found,  or  thought  that 
he  found,  in  the  Pentateuch  as  it  has  come  down  to  us. 

But  there  is  no  lack  of  other  signs  which  point  to  a  later 
age  than  that  of  the  Exodus  for  the  composition  of  some 
parts,  at  least,  of  the  Pentateuch.  Before  a  sanctuary  exists, 
we  hear  (Exodus  xxx.  13,  &c.)  of  the  "shekel  of  the  sanc- 
tuary." A  mighty  strong  west  wind — in  the  original  Hebrew, 
a  wind  of  the  sea,  that  is  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea — takes 
away  the  locusts  from  Egypt,  and  casts  them  into  the  Red 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  185. 


526  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

Sea  ;  but  the  Mediterranean  Sea  winds  would  blow,  not  over 
the  land  of  Egypt,  but  across  Canaan.  Hence  this  passage 
was  written  by  some  one  settled  in  the  latter  country,  and 
therefore  not  by  Moses.  In  Deuteronomy  xi.  29,  30,  Moses 
speaks  of  the  Canaanites  which  dwell  in  the  champaign  over 
against  Gilgal  beside  the  plains  of  Moreh  ;  but  according  to 
the  Book  of  Joshua  the  name  Gilgal  was  not  given  to  the 
place  till  the  people  had  been  circumcised  after  entering  the 
land  of  Canaan.^  The  same  remark  applies  to  the  name  Dan 
as  a  local  designation  ;  and  from  the  Book  of  Judges  we  learn 
that  the  name  was  given  at  a  time  when  there  was  no  king 
in  Israel.  These  words  were,  therefore,  written  by  some  one 
living  after  the  establishment  of  the  monarchy  ;  and  therefore 
the  passage  in  the  Book  of  Joshua  which  relates  the  changing 
of  the  name  of  the  city  of  Laish  into  Dan  was  not  written  by 
Joshua.  So  in  Genesis  xxxvi.  31,  mention  is  made  of  kings 
that  reigned  in  Edom,  before  the  reign  of  any  king  in  Israel. 
This  passage,  therefore,  could  not  have  been  written  at  the 
earliest  before  the  days  of  Saul.  In  the  first  of  the  books 
which  bear  the  name  of  Samuel,  ix.  9,  we  are  told  that  the 
person  then  called  Roeh,  a  "  seer,"  had  in  earlier  times  been 
known  as  Nabi,  or  prophet.  But  in  the  Pentateuch  and  the 
Book  of  Joshua,  the  word  Nabi  alone  occurs,  Roeh  being  never 
found.  Therefore,  if  the  statement  in  the  Book  of  Samuel  be 
correct,  these  books  cannot  have  been  brought  into  their  pre- 
sent shape  before  the  days  of  Samuel.  For  the  marvel  of  the 
sun  standing  still  over  Gibeon  and  the  moon  over  Ajalon, 
Joshua  X.  13  is  said  to  refer  tq  the  book  of  Jasher.  Is  it 
possible  that  Joshua  could  appeal  to  another  book  as  testi- 
mony for  an  event  in  which  he  himself  was  primarily  and 
personally  concerned  .''  But  the  injunction  of  David  to  teach 
the  men  of  Judah  the  use  of  the  bow  is  also  referred  to  the 
book  of  Jasher.  Therefore  the  passage  in  Joshua  referring  to 
^  Pentatetich,  Part  II.  p.  200. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  MATTER.  527 

this  book  was  written  not  earlier  than  the  reign  of  David.  In 
the  Book  of  Numbers  (xxi.  13-15)  is  a  curious  passage  in- 
forming us  that  Arnon  is  the  border  of  Moab,  between  Moab 
and  the  Amorites,  and  referring  to  the  book  of  the  wars  of 
Jehovah  for  what  he  did  in  the  Red  Sea  and  in  the  brook  of 
Arnon.  But  the  information  about  Arnon  as  the  border  of 
Moab  would  have  been  notorious  for  those  for  whom  Moses 
was  writing ;  ^  and  the  song  referred  to,  evidently  as  an 
ancient  one,  could  only  just  have  been  composed,  since  it 
refers  to  events  which  had  happened,  according  to  the  story, 
only  a  few  days  before.  This  passage,  therefore,  was  not 
written  during  the  life-time  of  Moses. 

The  Bishop  has  thus  clearly  shown  the  history  of  the 
Pentateuch  to  be  an  impossible  narrative,  and  exhibited  un- 
mistakably its  composite  character.  The  two  accounts  of  the 
Creation  and  the  Flood  cannot  have  come  from  the  same 
writer  at  the  same  time  ;  nor  is  it  conceivable  that  a  leader 
and  lawgiver,  such  as  Moses  is  represented  to  have  been,  can 
have  put  together  an  artificial  chronology,  and  invented  a 
series  of  factors,  inconsistent  with  each  other,  yet  all  yielding 
the  same  impossible  total  for  the  Israelites  of  the  Exodus. 
Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that,  for  the  position  assumed  by  the 
more  pronounced  Bibliolaters  who  poured  out  the  vials  of 
their  wrath  upon  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  the  proving  of  a  single 
contradiction  or  inconsistency  is  as  fatal  as  the  proving  of  a 
hundred.  But,  instead  of  occurring  in  units  or  in  tens,  they 
are  as  thick  as  autumn  leaves  in  Vallombrosa.  Historians 
writing  in  a  later  age  can  seldom  play  faultlessly  the  part  of 
a  contemporary  eye-witness  and  chronicler.  Some  writer  in 
Genesis  (xii.  6,  xiii.  7)  is  careful  to  state  that  the  Canaanite 
and  the  Perizzite  were  then  in  the  land  ;  another  in  Deutero- 
nomy reminds  the  reader  that  Moses  declared  the  law  in  the 
land  of  Moab  on  the  other  side  Jordan — both  showing  thus 
"^  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  205. 


528  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  x. 

that  they  Hved  and  wrote  after  the  expulsion  or  destruction  of 
the  Canaanites,  and  after  their  settlement  on  the  west  side  of 
Jordan.  Another  in  Leviticus  (xviii.  28),  writing  according  to 
the  story  during  the  sojourn  in  the  wilderness,  warns  his 
countrymen  so  to  live  that  the  land  may  not  spue  them 
out  as  it  had  spued  out  the  natives  which  were  before  them. 
The  name  of  the  city  of  Kirjath-Arba  was  changed  to  Hebron 
after  the  conquest  by  Caleb  in  the  days  of  Joshua  ;  yet  the 
author  of  the  Pentateuch  (Genesis  xiii.  18)  is  acquainted  with 
its  later  name.  The  blessing  of  the  tribes  by  Moses  is  one  of 
the  most  striking  and  not  least  important  passages  of  the 
Book  of  Deuteronomy  :  yet  it  is  introduced  by  a  notice  which 
cannot  have  been  written  by  Moses  himself,  and  which  tends 
at  the  least  to  throw  a  doubt  on  the  genuineness  of  the  blessing 
itself. 

Had  the  Bishop  proposed  to  himself  a  work  of  destruction 
only,  his  task  would  have  been  at  this  point  ended.  He  had 
shown  that,  as  a  history,  the  Pentateuch  was  untrustworthy 
from  beginning  to  end,  and  that  throughout  it  bristled  with 
impossibilities.  He  had  shown  that  a  legislation  which  is  set 
forth  as  applying  to  the  wanderings  in  the  desert  must  have 
been  put  together  long  after  the  settlement  in  Canaan.  He 
had  shown  still  more  that  frightful  massacres  done  in  cold 
blood  under  the  alleged  sanction  and  command  of  God  Plim- 
self  are  historically  impossible,  and  had  their  origin  either  in 
the  extravagances  of  popular  tradition  or  in  the  imagination 
of  the  compiler. 

Thus  far  he  had  been  moving  on  sure  ground.  The  in- 
consistencies cannot  be  explained  away  :  the  contradictions 
cannot  be  removed,  and  therefore  the  superstition  which 
worships  the  letter  of  the  Bible  rests  absolutely  upon  no- 
thing, and  is,  in  fact,  a  wild  and  absurd  dream.  But  the 
Bishop  could  not  rest  here.  He  was  not  bound  to  show  how 
the  Pentateuch  assumed  the  shape  in  which  it  has  come  down 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  MATTER.  529 

to  US  ;  yet,  if  the  task  were  practicable,  it  would  bring  before 
us  an  instructive  chapter  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind. 
He  felt,  therefore,  that  he  ought  to  see  whether  these  books, 
when  compared  with  other  portions  of  the  Old  Testament, 
might  not  reveal  the  secret  of  their  composition  ;  but  he  was 
conscious  at  the  same  time  that  he  was  entering  now  on  the 
field  of  conjecture,  in  which  the  conclusions  reached  must 
remain  in  greater  or  less  degree  matters  of  opinion. 


VOL.  I.  M  M 


CHAPTER   XL 

THE   PENTATEUCH:     ITS   COMPOSITION. 

On  this  portion  of  his  task,  the  Bishop  entered  with  cheer- 
fulness as  well  as  with  energy  ;  and  on  the  whole  the  lapse  of  a 
quarter  of  a  century  has  justified  his  confidence.  The  founda- 
tion of  the  inquiry  was  laid  in  the  distinction  traced  between 
the  Elohist  and  Jehovist  writers  of  the  Pentateuch.  The 
matter  contributed  by  the  former  amounted,  as  he  believed, 
to  about  one  half  of  the  Book  of  Genesis,  a  small  part  of 
Exodus,  still  less  of  Numbers,  a  very  small  portion  of  Deu- 
teronomy, and  about  the  same  of  Joshua.^  Now,  it  is  perfectly 
clear  that  if  in  these  portions  of  the  Pentateuch  the  word  used 
for  God  is  Elohim,  and  that  this  word  is  adhered  to  until 
we  reach  the  narrative  of  a  special  revelation  of  the  name 
Jehovah,  the  writer  of  these  portions  must  be  older  than  other 
writers  to  whom  this  name  is  familiar.  This  special  revelation 
we  have  in  the  third  and  sixth  chapters  of  the  Book  of  Exodus. 
The  declaration  that  to  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  God  had 
made  himself  known  under  the  name  of  El  Shaddai,  but  that 
by  the  name  Jehovah  he  was  not  known  to  them,  cannot,  he 
insisted,  be  explained  to  say 

*'  anything  else  than  this — that  the  name  Jehovah  was    not 
known  at  all  to  the  Patriarchs,  but  was  now  for  the  first 

^  Pc7ttateiich,  Part  II.  p.  228. 


1S63.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  COMPOSITION.  531 

time   revealed   as   the   name   by   which   the   God   of  Israel 
would  be  henceforth  distinguished  from  all  other  gods."  ^ 

Of  this,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  there  can  be  no  question. 
But  it  is  astonishing  to  find  that  the  declaration  is  not  borne 
out  by  the  record. 

"  We  come  at  once,"  the  Bishop  remarks,  "  on  the  contradictory 
fact  that  the  name  Jehovah  is  repeatedly  used  in  the  earlier 
parts  of  the  story." 

It  is  used  not  merely  in  relating  events  which  the  writer 
might  describe  under  forms  familiar  to  himself  and  to  his 
hearers. 

"  It  is  put  into  the  mouths  of  the  Patriarchs  themselves.  It  is 
known  to  Eve,  to  Lamech,  and  to  Noah  ;  to  Sarai,  Rebekah, 
Leah,  Rachel ;  to  Laban  and  Bethuel  ;  even  to  heathens,  as 
to  Abimelech,  the  Philistine  king  of  Gerar  ;  and,  generally, 
we  are  told  that  as  early  as  the  time  of  Enos,  the  son  of 
Seth,  '  then  began  men  to  call  upon  the  name  of  Jehovah,' 
though  the  name  was  already  known  to  Eve,  according  to 
the  narrative,  more  than  two  centuries  before." 

Attempts  have  of  course  been  made  to  reconcile  these 
discrepancies  ;  and  in  the  effort  Kurtz  can  bring  himself 
to  say  : — 

"  It  is  not  expressly  said  that  the  name  Jehovah  was  unknown 
before  the  time  of  Moses,  but  merely  that  in  the  Patriarchal 
age  God  had  not  revealed  the  fulness  and  depths  of  His 
Nature  to  which  that  name  particularl}'  belonged." 

But  it  is  expressly  said,  "  B}-  my  name  Jehovah  I  was  not 
known  to  them."  Even  the  learned  Jewish  critic  and  com- 
mentator Kalisch  can  speak  of  the  following  as  the  "only 
possible  "  explanation  : — 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  230. 

M  M  2 


532  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

"  My  name  Jehovah  has  not  been  understood  and  compre- 
hended by  the  Patriarchs  in  its  essence  and  depth,  although 
it  was  even  in  their  time  occasionally  mentioned." 

It  is  mentioned,  not  occasionally  only,  but  constantly,  and  in 
phrases  which  imply  as  full  a  connotation  as  any  in  the  Book 
of  Exodus.  "  Abraham  believed  in  Jehovah,  and  He  counted 
it  to  him  for  righteousness."  "  I  am  Jehovah,  the  God  of 
Abraham  thy  father,  and  the  God  of  Isaac  ;  the  land  whereon 
thou  liest,  to  thee  will  I  give  it,"  &c.  "  And  Jacob  vowed 
a  vow.  If  God  will  be  with  me,  then  shall  Jehovah  be  my 
God."  But  wherever,  throughout  the  Book  of  Genesis,  this 
name  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  any  one,  the  writer  is  the 
Jehovist. 

"  In  fact,  the  Elohist  never  uses  the  name  Jehovah  in  his 
narrative  till  after  he  has  explained  its  origin,"  and  he 
"  represents  the  name  as  having  been  first  announced  to 
Moses  and  the  Israelites  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus.  .  .  . 
The  Jehovist  uses  it  freely  all  along ;  and,  without  giving 
any  account  of  its  first  introduction,  he  puts  it  in  the  mouth 
of  Eve.  .  .  .  The  question  now  to  be  considered  is,  which 
of  these  two  writers  gives  the  true  account  .'*  Or,  rather,  is 
either  statement  correct }  Does  not  the  very  existence  of 
this  discrepancy  suggest  the  possibility  of  neither  version 
being  the  right  one  ?  May  it  not  be  possible  that  the 
Elohist  wrote  at  a  time  when  the  word  was  quite  new  and 
fresh-coined  ;  when  it  had  only  just  been  introduced,  per- 
haps by  himself,  as  the  national  personal  name  for  the 
Divine  Being,  with  the  view  of  drawing  more  distinctly  the 
line  of  demarcation  between  the  people  of  Israel — now  first 
gathered  under  a  king,  and  no  longer  living  in  scattered, 
separate  tribes — and  the  idolatrous  nations  around  them  .'' 
May  not  the  Elohistic  writer,  wishing  to  inforce  the 
adoption  of  this  strange  name,  have  composed  for  the  purpose 
this  portion  of  the  Mosaic  story  ;  while  the  later  Jehovist — 
writing  when   the  name,  though  not  perhaps  even  yet  in 


1 863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  533 

every-day  use,  was  beginning  to  be  more  generally  known, 
and  was,  at  all  events,  familiar  to  himself — uses  it  freely 
from  the  first ;  without  perceiving,  or  at  least  witJioiit feeling 
very  strong/y,  the  contradiction  thereby  imported  into  the 
narrative."  ^ 

Without  going  further,  the  evidence  already  adduced  seems 
to  show  that  the  name  could  scarcely  have  originated  in  the 
way  described  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Exodus  ;  and  it  is 
indisputable  that,  whenever  or  by  whomsoever  it  may 
have  been  introduced,  it  was  not  regarded  as  a  sound  so 
sacred  that  it  could  not  be  used  or  uttered.  That  is  quite 
a  late  superstition  ;  and  when  this  extravagant  notion  had 
taken  root,  the  word  practically  went  out  of  use  ;  but  in  all 
the  earlier  ages  of  the  Hebrew  history  both  Jehovah  and 
Elohim  were  freely  employed  in  the  composition  of  proper 
names.  The  question  of  ^the  introduction,  or,  rather,  of  the 
origin,  of  this  name  is  of  great  interest,  and,  not  less,  of  great 
moment.  It  may  be  part  of  the  Hebrew  verb  "  to  be,"  "  pro- 
bably the  third  person  present,  or  the  same  tense  of  the 
Hiphil  form."  But,  if  it  be  so,  then  it  is  a  pure  Semitic  word, 
and  the  name  is  proved  to  be  the  inheritance  of  all  tribes 
speaking  Semitic  dialects,  and  notably  of  all  Canaanites 
and  Phoenicians.  Accordingly  we  find  the  name  in  common 
use  among  those  tribes,  and  taken  over  from  them  by  the 
Greeks,  in  many  of  whose  mythologies  Semitic  names  have 
been  largely  embodied,  and  so  ingeniously  transformed 
that  the  borrowing  is  not  at  first  sight  perceptible.  But 
Melikertes  is  Melkarth,  Adonis  is  Adonai,  Athamas  is 
Tammuz,  Palaimon  is  Baal-Hamon  ;  and  with  scarcely  less 
certainty  Jehovah,  Jahve,  is  not  only  the  lau  of  cuneiform 
inscriptions,  but  the  lakchos  of  the  Dion}'siac  mysteries.  At 
the  time  of  writing  the  Second  Part  of  his  work  on  the  Penta- 
teuch, the  Bishop  had  concluded  that  Samuel  was  the  first  to 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  262. 


534  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

form  and  introduce  the  name,^  perhaps  in  imitation  of  some 
Egyptian  name  of  the  Deity  which  may  have  reached  his 
ears.  Later  on,  in  his  examination  of  the  New  Bible  Com- 
mentary, he  regards  its  connexion  with  the  Greek  substantive 
verb  as  estabHshed  ;  and  if  the  account  of  its  introduction 
cannot  be  accepted  as  historical,  the  partial  displacing  of  the 
name  Elohim  for  that  of  Jehovah  or  Jahveh  is  precisely 
parallel  to  the  displacement  of  the  Vedic  Varuna  by  Dyaus, 
and  of  Dyaus  again  by  Indra.  But  the  existence  of  the  sixth 
chapter  of  Exodus  as  part  of  the  distinctively  Elohistic 
narrative  in  which  that  name  has  been  used  proves  con- 
clusively that  there  were  reasons  for  giving  a  solemn  sanction 
to  the  substitution  of  the  new  name  ;  and  the  name,  so  in- 
troduced, was  carried  back  by  the  later  Jehovistic  writers  to 
the  very  earliest  times.  Some  have  affected  to  feel  astonish- 
ment at  the  possibility  of  their  doing  this  without  perceiving 
the  contradiction  which  they  were  introducing  between  their 
own  statements  and  those  of  the  Elohist.  The  answer  lies  in 
the  frank  admission  that  they  should  have  seen  it  ;  and  the 
author  of  the  Jehovistic  narratives  of  the  Creation  and  the 
Deluge,  or  the  revisers  who  pieced  the  Elohistic  and  Jehovistic 
narratives  together,  ought  to  have  seen  that  they  were  going 
in  the  teeth  of  the  Elohistic  story.  But  they  have  not  seen 
it.  So,  too,  the  immense  body  of  devout  readers  of  the  Bible 
in  later  ages  and  in  our  own  day  ought  to  have  seen  these 
"  obvious  discrepancies."  But  they  have  not.  It  is  no  less 
wonderful  that  the  Ptolemaic  system  of  astronomy  should 
have  held  its  ground,  although  Aristarchus  of  Samos  had  set 
forth  a  heliocentric  system  differing  inappreciably  from  that 
of  Copernicus  and  Newton.  But  so  it  was.  We  cannot  reason 
back  from  the  discernment  of  the  critical  eye  to  dulness  of 
vision  which  looks  only  for  edification.- 

These,  however,  are  not  the  only  difficulties  connected  Avith 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  339.  -  lb.  p.  265. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  535 

the  alleged  Mosaic  introduction  of  the  name  Jehovah.  From 
this  time  the  word  is  employed  in  the  historical  books  as  the 
ruling  name  for  God,  and  is  clearly  exhibited  as  the  name  by 
which  the  God  of  Israel  would  be  especially  and  commonly 
known  to  His  people.  But  in  this  case  it  would  be  found  in 
common,  if  not  in  altogether  exclusive,  use,  in  those  books 
which  do  not  deal  with  history.  Instead  of  this,  we  find  it 
used  very  rarely,  if  at  all,  by 

"  most  eminent  writers,  who  must  have  been  familiar  with  the 
name  and  must  have  used  it,  if  it  was  really  common  in 
those  days,"  ^ 

and  of  these  writers  the  most  noteworthy  are  the  authors  of 
the  Psalms,  which  in  the  Hebrew  are  divided  into  five  books, 
and  of  which  seventy-three  are  ascribed  by  their  titles  to 
David.  Of  the  fourteen  Psalms  which  have  inscriptions  re- 
ferring to  events  in  his  life,  eight  are  said  to  have  reference 
to  events  in  his  earlier  years  ;  and  six  of  them  (the  remaining 
two  will  be  dealt  with  presently)  exhibit  the  name  Elohim 
forty  times,  and  Jehovah  six  times.  Surely  the  Bishop  is 
justified  in  holding  it  to  be  inconceivable  that  such  a  man  as 
David  should  during  a  large  portion  of  his  life  have  been 
writing  Psalms  in  which  the  name  Jehovah  is  hardly  ever, 
sometimes  never,  employed,  if  the  story  of  the  giving  of  the 
name  be  historical,  or  if  it  was  known  to  him  that  this  name 
was  first  revealed  to  Moses  by  God  Himself,  as  the  name  by 
which  He  chose  to  be  addressed,  the  proper  name  of  the  God 
of  Israel,  "  This  is  My  name  for  ever  ;  and  this  is  My  me- 
morial unto  all  generations."  If  in  addition  to  these  six 
Psalms  we  take  the  other  twelve  of  the  Second  Book  which 
are  ascribed  to  David,  wc  find  Elohim  occurring  in  them 
seven  times,  on  an  average,  to  Jehovah  once,  and  in  nine  to 
the  exclusion  of  Jehovah  altogether.-  The  phenomena  of  the 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  268.  -  lb.  p.  277. 


536  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  xi. 

sixty-eighth  Psalm  are  still  more  significant.  That  it  belongs 
to  David's  age,  and  not  to  any  earlier  one,  is  clear  from  the 
mention  of  the  hill  in  which  Elohim  desires  to  dwell  for  ever,  of 
the  temple  at  Jerusalem,  of  the  sanctuary,  of  the  holy  places, 
while  its  martial  tone  seems  to  prove  that  it  cannot  be  brought 
down  to  the  days  of  Solomon,  and  the  expressions  which 
speak  of  Judah  and  Benjamin  as  joined  with  the  princes  of 
Zebulon  and  Naphthali  point  not  lessclearly  to  a  time  anterior 
to  the  division  of  the  kingdom. 

"  This  Psalm  contains  Elohim  thirty-one  times,  and  Adonai, 
lord,  seven  times,  as  well  as  the  ancient  name  Shaddai  once, 
while  Jehovah  appears  only  twice  and  Jah  twice."  ^ 

But  the  emphatic  way  in  which  this  name  Jah  or  Jehovah 
is  introduced  in  the  fourth  verse,  seems  to  force  on  us  the 
conclusion  that  it  was  only  then  for  the  first  time  coming  into 
use,  instead  of  having  been  employed  generally  for  nearly 
half  a  millennium.  Further  yet,  the  Psalm  opens  with  the 
very  words  which  are  said  to  have  been  used  by  Moses  to 
greet  the  ark  when  it  set  forward  on  its  march,  the  only 
difference  being  that  in  the  Book  of  Numbers  the  name  is 
Jehovah,  in  the  Psalm  it  is  Elohim  ;  and  surely  the  Psalmist 
could  never  have  made  this  change  had  he  drawn  "  his  lan- 
guage from  so  sacred  a  book  as  the  Pentateuch,  according 
to  the  ordinary  view,  must  have  been."  ^  But  if  the  passage 
from  Numbers  was  written  after  the  Psalm,  and  at  a  time  when 
the  name  Jehovah  had  come  into  common  use,  we  can  readily 
understand,  and  discern,  the  motive  of  the  adaptation.  The 
Psalm  is,  further,  instructive  as  to  the  form  in  which  the 
popular  traditions  of  ancient  events  in  Jewish  history  were 
still  found — the  dropping  heavens,  the  clouds  dropping  water, 
the  trembling  of  Sinai,  and,  still  more,  the  flight  of  the  armed 
warriors  and  bowmen   of  Ephraim,  of  which  the  Pentateuch 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  292.  -  lb.  p.  293. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  COMPOSITION.  537 


seems  to  have  preserved  no  record,  unless  the  passage  in 
Deuteronomy  i.  44,  is  taken  to  refer  to  it.  The  whole  Psalm 
is,  indeed,  a  magnificent  poem.  By  Hupfeld  it  is  described 
as  "  the  most  spirited,  lively,  and  powerful,"  by  Ewald  as 
"the  grandest,  most  splendid,  most  artistic,"  of  the  whole 
series.  But  if  it  be  such,  it  becomes  "  almost  incredible  that 
its  author  ....  should  have  been  willing  to  borrow  two 
sentences  from  two  ancient  documents."  ^  In  short,  the  Psalm 
belongs  manifestly  to  the  time  of  the  removal  of  the  ark  to 
Mount  Zion,  the  only  time  which,  according  to  Hupfeld,  suits 
certain  of  its  features.  It  must,  therefore,  be  regarded,  in 
De  Wette's  words,  as  "  among  the  oldest  relics  of  Hebrew 
poetry,  and  of  the  highest  originality ;  "  but  on  this  very 
ground  its  evidence  against  the  historical  trustworthiness  of 
the  story  in  Exodus  becomes  the  stronger.  What,  then,  is  to 
be  said  of  the  two  Psalms,  xxxiv.  and  cxlii.  (out  of  the  eight 
already  mentioned),  which  are  said  to  have  been  composed  by 
David  at  a  time  long  preceding  the  transference  of  the  ark 
to  Jerusalem,  in  which,  together,  the  name  Jehovah  is  used 
nineteen  times,  Elohim  not  once }  Of  these  two  Psalms  the 
former  is  ascribed  to  the  time  of  his  expulsion  from  Gath  by 
Achish  ;  yet  its  tone,  as  Hengstenberg  notices,  is  singularly 
quiet,  and  we  have  here  the  alphabetical  arrangement  which 
occurs  only  in  those  Psalms  which  are  not  called  forth  by 
particular  occasions,  but  framed  for  the  purpose  of  edifying- 
others.  But  if  the  title  be  inaccurate,  we  have  no  reason  for 
ascribing  the  Psalm  to  David  at  all.  It  is  in  all  likelihood  the 
composition  of  an  old  man  who  bids  children  approach  and 
learn  from  him  the  fear  of  Jehovah.  But  we  have,  the  Bishop 
adds, 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  297.  The  Bishop  remarks  that  "both  these 
passages  are  in  close  connexion  with  the  context,  and  have  all  the  appear- 
ance of  being  part  of  the  original  effusion,"  the  conclusion  being  "  in  fact, 
that  the  Psalm  was  in  all  probability  written  /irst,  and  the  passages  in 
question  copied  from  it  by  the  later  writers." 


538  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

"  a  Psalm  composed  by  David,  according  to  the  title,  on  this 
very  occasion,  Psalm  Ivi.,  and  in  a  very  different  tone — one 
of  anguish  and  fear  quite  suitable  to  it ;  and  in  this  we 
have,  as  we  might  expect,  Elohim  nine  times,  Jehovah 
once."  ^ 

In  the  other  Psalm,  likewise,  we  have  nothing  to  fix  it,  as 
the  title  affirms,  to  the  time  of  David's  sojourn  in  the  cave  of 
Adullam  ;  but  there  is  another  Psalm,  Ivii.,  which  seemingly 
was  composed  at  this  time,  and  this  contains  Elohim  seven 
times,  Jehovah  not  once  ;  and  it  is  surely  most  unlikely  that 

"  on  the  very  same  occasion  David  should  have  written  two 
Psalms,  in  one  of  which  he  never  uses  the  word  Jehovah, 
while  in  the  other  he  never  uses  the  word  Elohim." 

The  general  conclusion  can  scarcely  be  withstood. 

"  It  seems  absolutely  impossible  that,  while  other  persons 
(as  the  history  teaches) " — Eli,  Samuel,  Jonathan,  .... 
Naomi  and  Ruth,  Boaz  and  his  reapers,  Hannah,  Abigail, 
nay,  even  the  heathen  Philistines,  were  using  freely  the 
sacred  name  Jehovah,  yet  David  himself  used  it  so  sparingly 
that  in  several  of  his  Psalms  it  appears  not  at  all.  It  is 
true,  the  history  puts  the  word  in  David's  mouth  much 
more  frequently  than  Elohim — that  is  to  say,  the  history 
represents  David  as  using  constantly  the  name  Jehovah, 
and  scarcely  the  name  Elohim  at  all,  at  the  very  time  when 
he  was  hiding  in  the  wilderness,  and  writing,  apparently. 
Psalm  after  Psalm  in  which  Elohim  occurs  continually,  and 
Jehovah  scarcely  at  all."  '^ 

But  the  sixty-eighth  Psalm  suggests  a  comparison  with  the 
song  which  bears  the  names  of  Deborah  and  Barak,  a  con- 
I'unction  which  seems  of  itself  to  show  that  it  cannot  be,  as 
the  title  avers,  "  the  unpremeditated  effusion  of  the  moment 
of  triumph."  This  song  is  thoroughly  Jehovistic,  and,  if  it 
be  genuine,  seems  to  render  it  inconceivable  that 

1  Pcfitafeiech,  Part  II.  p.  298.  -  lb.  p.  328. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  COMPOSITION.  539 

"  David  should  have  used  [the  name]  so  sparingly  till  a  late 
period  of  his  life  ;  " 

but  on  the  other  hand  there  are  signs  pointing  apparently 
to  an  early  date.  There  is  no  mention  of  Judah,  or  of  Levi, 
of  the  priesthood  or  of  the  sanctuary  ;  but  the  disarming  of 
the  Israelites  refers  seemingly  to  the  times  of  Samuel  and 
Saul,  and  some  passages  of  the  song  are  identical  with  others 
in  the  Psalm.     It  follows 

"  that  either  the  Psalmist  was  acquainted  with  the  song  of 
Deborah  and  borrowed  expressions  from  it,  or  that  the 
writer  of  that  song  drew  his  ideas  from  the  Psalms  of 
David.  .  .  .  Which,  then,  of  these  two  poems  was  first 
written  ?  We  reply,  without  hesitation,  tlie  Psalm.  For 
it  is  far  more  probable  that  a  later  writer  might  change 
Elohim  into  Jehovah,  than  David  change  Jehovah,  the 
covenant  name  of  the  God  of  Israel,  into  Elohim  ;  more 
especially  in  the  last  clause,  in  which  he  has  actually 
written,  '  before  Elohim,  the  Elohim  of  Israel,'  where  the 
other  has,  '  before  Jehovah,  the  Elohim  of  Israel.'  " 

The  general  result  of  the  whole  inquiry  thus  far  is  that  the 
earliest  portions  of  the  Pentateuch — in  other  words,  the  first 
scanty  beginnings  of  it — were  written  four  centuries  at  least 
after  the  supposed  time  of  the  Exodus.  In  the  framing  of 
this  sketch  it  is  in  a  high  degree  likely  that  Samuel  may  have 
taken  the  chief  part ;  but  it  is  actually  impossible  that  his 
narrative  should  be  a  mere  invention  of  his  own  brain.  The 
charges  of  fiction  and  pious  fraud  which,  as  .some  will  have  it, 
would  thus  be  brought  home  to  him,  are  ludicrous.  We  might 
with  equal  reason  set  down  the  early  Greek  and  Roman  tradi- 
tions as  the  invention  of  Herodotus  and  Livy,  or  of  the  ruder 
chroniclers  who  may  have  preceded  them.  The  discovery  of 
the  composite  character  of  the  Pentateuch  is  spoken  of  by 
Hupfeld  as 


540  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xr. 

"  not  only  one  of  the  most  important,  and  most  pregnant 
with  consequences  for  the  interpretation  of  the  historical 
books  of  the  Old  Testament,  or  rather  for  their  whole 
theology  and  history  ;  but  it  is  also  one  of  the  most  certain 
discoveries  which  have  been  made  in  the  domain  of  criticism 
and  the  history  of  literature.  Whatever  the  anti-critical 
party  may  bring  forward  to  the  contrary,  it  will  maintain 
itself  ....  so  long  as  there  exists  such  a  thing  as  criticism." 

This  discovery,  and  therefore  this  fact,  the  Bishop  adds, 

"  it  becomes  us  as  true  men,  and  servants  of  the  God  of  Truth, 
to  recognise,  whatever  may  be  the  consequences,  however  it 
may  require  us  to  modify  our  present  views  of  the  Mosaic 
system,  or  of  Christianity  itself"  ^ 

The  share  of  Samuel  in  the  work  may  not  be  great,  but  it 
is  none  the  less  important ;  and  those  portions  of  the  first  four 
books  and  of  the  Book  of  Joshua,  which  do  not  belong  to 
him,  or  perhaps  it  should  rather  be  said  to  the  Elohist,  were 
composed  by  one  or  more  writers  living 

"  in  the  latter  days  of  David  and  in  the  early  part  of  Solomon's 
'  reign,  with  the  exception  of  some  interpolations,  of  which  a 
few  smaller  ones  occur  in  Genesis,  but  larger  ones  in  Exodus, 
Leviticus,  Numbers,  and  Joshua  ;  and  these  interpolations 
belong  to  the  Deuteronomist,  who  may  fairly  be  regarded 
as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  personages  in  all  Jewish 
history." 

At  the  outset  a  comparison  of  his  work  with  that  of  his 
predecessors  forces  on  our  notice  the  fact  that,  whereas  in  the 
earlier  books  the  priests  are  invariably  called  the  sons  of 
Aaron,  never  the  sons  of  Levi,  in  Deuteronomy  they  are 
always  called  sons  of  Levi  or  Levites,  never  the  sons  of 
Aaron  ;  and,  in  fact,  in  this  book  Levi,  not  Aaron,  is  men- 
tioned as  the  root  of  the  priestly  office  and  dignity.     Is   it 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  I'^i. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  541 

conceivable  that,  in  the  inappreciable  interval  which  separates 
the  time  of  the  Book  of  Numbers  from  that  of  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy,  Moses  should  have  changed  so  completely, 

*'  not  only  his  tone  and  style,  but  his  very  phraseology,  so  as 
up  to  this  point  of  time  to  have  called  the  priests  invariably 
by  one  particular  designation,  and  then  suddenly  to  drop  it, 
and  call  them  ever  afterwards  by  another  "  ?  ^ 

This  fact  connects  itself  with  others.  Not  one  of  the 
prophets  speaks  of  the  priests  as  the  sons  of  Aaron,  and  the 
first  Jeroboam  is  censured  not  for  making  priests  which  were 
not  of  the  sons  of  Aaron,  but  because  he  made  priests  which 
were  not  of  the  seed  of  Levi.  It  is,  then,  at  once  clear  that 
the  Deuteronomist  and  the  prophets  felt  themselves  in  no 
way  bound  to  abide  by  the  statements  or  the  terms  of  the 
first  four  books  of  the  Pentateuch.  A  signal  instance  of  this 
disregard  occurs  in  the  Deuteronomistic  version  of  the  fourth 
commandment,  which  gives  a  wholly  different  reason  for  the 
observance  of  the  Sabbath,  although  both  the  Deuteronomist 
and  the  earlier  writer  profess  to  give  the  identical  words  spoken 
by  Jehovah  Himself  at  the  very  same  point  of  time. 

The  Bishop  concludes  his  summary  of  results  obtained  in 
his  first  two  Parts  with  the  assertion  that  the  main  conclusions 
are  established  beyond  doubt,  although 

"  as  to  the  details  we  can  only  feel  our  way  along  with  the 
utmost  caution,  with  continued  labour,  and  constantly 
repeated  survey  of  the  ground  travelled  over." 

Few  fallacies  are  more  widely  spread,  few  more  mischievous, 
than  the  notions  which  infer  the  general  worthlessness  of 
critical  methods  from  differences  of  opinion  among  the  critics. 
The  fact  of  their  differing  is  enough  for  their  opponents  ;  the 
subject-matter  of  their  differences  is  prudently  and  carefully 
kept  out  of  sight.  This  plan  has  been  diligently  followed  in 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  360. 


542  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

almost  all  controversies — in  those  which  are  concerned  with 
the  age  and  authorship  of  the  so-called  Homeric  poems,  with 
the  Greek  and  Roman  myths  and  traditions,  not  less  than 
with  those  which  have  gathered  round  the  Hebrew  Scriptures. 
Thus  Mr.  MacCaul  would  triumphantly  dismiss  as  rubbish 
all  the  investigations  of  writers  whose  opinions  were  opposed 
to  his  own,  on  the  ground  that  they  were  not  unanimous. 

"  Hupfeld  condemns  Knobel.  Ewald  condemns  Hupfeld  and 
Knobel.  Knobel  condemns  Ewald  and  Hupfeld.  If 
Knobel's  criticism  is  correct,  Hupfeld  is  worthless.  If 
Ewald  be  right,  the  others  must  be  deficient  in  critical 
acumen.  They  may  all  be  wrong  ;  but  only  one  of  the 
three  can  be  right." 

He  forgot,  as  the  Bishop  remarked,  to  draw  attention  to 
the  fact  that  these  critics  are  all  agreed  as  to  the  main  points, 
and  differ  only  as  to  details.^  Still  less  did  he  care  to  admit 
that  the  fact  of  their  differing  is  a  strong  proof  of  their  in- 
dependence of  each  other  and  of  the  truth  of  that  judgement 
in  which  they  are  all  agreed.  The  argument  may  be  turned 
with  equal  ease  against  those  who  maintain  the  ordinary 
view.  Kurtz  condemns  Hengstenberg,  and  Hengstenberg 
condemns  Kurtz. 

The  alarm  felt  as  to  the  results  of  these  investigations  is 
perhaps  not  so  deep  as  it  was  when  the  Bishop  published  his 
own  thoughts  about  them.  Certainly,  it  is  not  so  widely 
spread.  It  is,  therefore,  the  less  necessary  now  to  reproduce 
his  earnest  and  cheering  counsels  to  those  who  were  charging 
him  with  robbing  them  of  the  Bible  ;  but  it  is  as  necessary 
as  it  was  then  to  mark  their  true  charity  and  tenderness. 

"  It  is  not  I,"  he  said,  "  who  require  you  to  abandon  the 
ordinary  notion  of  the  Mosaic  authorship  and  antiquity 
of  the  Pentateuch.     It  is  the  Truth  itself  which  does  so." 

'  Pentateuch,  Part  II.  p.  566 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  COMPOSITION.  543. 

The  internal  evidence  is  absolutely  conclusive  against  any 
idea  of  the  inviolable  sacredness  of  any  -part  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures,  down,  at  least,  to  the  time  of  the  Captivity.  There 
is  no  sign  of  the  Mosaic  Law  having  been  venerated,  obeyed, 
or  even  known  for  many  centuries  after  its  alleged  promulga- 
tion. The  Decalogue  is  never  quoted  by  any  one  of  the 
psalmists  and  prophets.  The  Levites  are  mentioned  only 
once  in  the  Psalms,  once  in  the  late  Isaiah,  thrice  in  one 
chapter  only  of  Jeremiah,  and  in  no  other  of  the  prophets 
before  the  Captivity. 

"  Aaron  is  mentioned  once  only  by  all  the  prophets.  Moses 
is  named  twice  only  before  the  Captivity,  and  referred  to, 
though  not  named,  in  Hosea."  ^ 

As  to  the  main  conclusion  he  had  no  hesitation. 

*'  It  may  be — rather  it  is,  as  I  believe,  undoubtedly — the  fact 
that  God  Himself,  by  the  power  of  the  Truth,  will  take 
from  us  in  this  age  the  Bible  as  an  idol,  which  we  have  set 
up  against  His  will,  to  bow  down  to  it  and  worship  it.  But 
while  He  takes  it  away  thus  with  the  one  hand,  does  He 
not  also  restore  it  to  us  with  the  other  .'*  not  to  be  put  into 
the  place  of  God,  and  served  with  idolatrous  worship,  but  to 
be  reverenced  as  a  book,  the  best  of  books,  the  work  of 
living  men  like  ourselves — of  men,  I  mean,  in  whose  hearts 
the  same  human  thoughts  were  stirring,  the  same  hopes  and 
fears  were  dwelling,  the  same  Gracious  Spirit  was  operating, 
three  thousand  years  ago,  as  now."  ^ 

But  here  the  inquiry  has  brought  us  to  a  point  at  which  the 
scene  is  shifted.  A  mass  of  evidence  has  shown  that  the 
Tetrateuch,  or  first  four  books  which  bear  the  name  of  Mosesj 
contains  passages  which  cannot  have  been  written  for  many 
ages  after  the  supposed  time  of  his  death.  How  is  it  with  the 
fifth  book  .''  Have  we  any  reason  for  thinking  that  this  book 
*  Pefitateuch,  Part  II.  p.  375.  ^  Ib^^.  381. 


544  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

is  more  strictly  and  completely  Mosaic  than  those  which  pre- 
cede it  ?  To  a  certain  extent  the  question  is  simplified  by  the 
fact  that  it  is  beyond  all  doubt  the  work  of  one  and  the  same 
hand,  the  exceptions  being  so  small  as  to  be  insignificant. 
The  introductory  discourse  is  interrupted  here  and  there  with 
geographical  and  other  details,  which  look  like  pieces  of  patch- 
work, and  with  remarks  which  treat  events  of  the  previous 
weeks  as  incidents  of  a  long  past  age  ;  but  otherwise  the  unity 
of  the  book  remains  unbroken,  while  in  matter  and  in  style  it 
is  as  unlike  any  of  the  so-called  Mosaic  books  as  any  two 
books  on  the  same  subject  could  possibly  be.  The  other 
books  are  filled  with  long  historical  narratives,  with  directions 
for  the  construction  of  the  sanctuary  and  its  furniture,  with 
the  functions  of  priests  and  the  ritual  of  the  altar.  But, 
lacking  almost  wholly  all  such  details,  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy, 

"almost  from  beginning  to  end,  is  one  magnificent  poem,  or 
collection  of  poems,  wholly  devoted  to  inforcing,  in  tones 
of  earnest  and  impassioned  eloquence — now  with  the  most 
persuasive  and  touching  tenderness,  now  with  the  most  im- 
pressive and  terrible  denunciations, — the  paramount  duties 
of  morality  and  religion."  ^ 

When  Mr.  Rawlinson  speaks  of  "  plainness,  inartificiality, 
absence  of  rhetorical  ornament,  and  occasional  defective 
arrangement "  as  being  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, he  certainly  cannot  be  speaking  of  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy.  What  he  says  applies  strictly  to  all  the  other 
books ;  but  it  is  precisely  the  contrast  between  the  common- 
place style  of  those  books,  and  the  "  spirit  and  energy,  the  fire  of 
holy  zeal,  the  warmth  of  imagination,"  running  through  the 
whole  of  Deuteronomy,  which  impels  us  irresistibly  to  the  con- 
clusion that  it  cannot  be  the  work  of  the  author  or  authors  of 
^  Peiitaieuch,  Part  III.  p.  393. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  COMPOSITION.  545 

the  Tetrateuch.  It  is  of  no  use  to  plead  as  an  argument  for  its 
Mosaic  authorship  that,  as  his  long  life's  work  drew  towards 
its  close,  the  guide  and  lawgiver  of  the  Israelites  may,  while 
he  stood  on  the  verge  of  the  unseen  world,  have  risen  to  a 
higher  discernment  of  spiritual  realities  and  have  been  carried 
away  by  thoughts  which  found  their  natural  expression  in  one 
unbroken  strain  of  sublime  and  most  earnest  eloquence.  It  is 
useless,  because  all  the  other  books  of  the  Pentateuch  contain 
a  multitude  of  passages  which  could  not  have  been  written 
during  the  age  of  Moses,  or  for  many  generations  later,  and 
because  the  same  remark  applies  to  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy 
also  ;  so  that,  although  the  substantial  unity  of  that  work  is 
proof  of  its  having  come,  with  these  exceptions,  from  one 
author,  that  author  certainly  was  not  Moses.  In  the  other 
books  the  priests  are  always,  as  we  have  seen,  styled  the  sons 
of  Aaron,  never  the  sons  of  Levi  ;  in  Deuteronomy  they  are 
always  the  sons  of  Levi,  never  the  sons  of  Aaron.  It  is 
impossible  that  any  one  author  could  on  such  a  subject  as 
this  so  completely  change  his  form  of  expression  in  the 
interval  of  a  few  days,  or  weeks  at  most.  Again,  the  Deutero- 
nomist  confines  all  sacrifices  to  one  place  ;  the  other  books 
prescribe  their  being  offered  in  all  places  where  Jehovah 
records  his  name.  The  former,  although  enjoining  the  observ- 
ance of  the  other  three  great  feasts  and  the  Passover,  makes  no 
mention  of  the  feast  of  Trumpets,  or  of  the  Day  of  Atonement, 
although  the  directions  in  Numbers  xxix.  are  said  to  have 
been  laid  down  by  Jehovah  Himself  only  a  few  weeks  before 
this  address  of  Moses.  There  are,  further,  a  number  of  senti- 
ments, statements,  and  expressions,  occurring  repeatedly  in 
Deuteronomy,  which  are  found  very  rarely,  many  of  them 
nowhere,  in  the  rest  of  the  Pentateuch,  while  many  expres- 
sions common  throughout  the  other  books  are  never  found  in 
Deuteronomy.  Thus  the  Bishop  gives  thirty-three  expres- 
sions, each  found  on  the  average  eight  times  in  that  book,  but 
VOL.  I.  N  N 


546  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

not  occurring  even  once  in  any  of  the  other  four  books. 
Without  going  further,  therefore,  this  fact  at  least  is  proved, 
that  the  author  of  Deuteronomy,  whoever  he  may  have 
been,  was  not  concerned  in  writing  the  main  portions  of  the 
rest  of  the  Pentateuch.^ 

That  he  hved  after  the  other  writers  is  manifest  from  his 
references  to  passages  in  the  story  of  the  Exodus  recorded 
in  the  other  books,  and  especially  to  the  laws  about  leprosy 
in  Leviticus.  If,  then,  the  Elohistic  and  Jehovistic  portions 
of  the  Pentateuch  could  not,  as  we  have  seen,  have  been 
written  earlier  than  the  days  of  Samuel,  David,  and  Solomon, 
the  Deuteronomist  cannot  have  lived  earlier,  and  may  have 
lived  later,  than  the  time  of  Solomon.  Are  there,  then,  any 
others  of  the  later  books  of  the  Old  Testament  which  exhibit 
any  striking  agreement  with  the  language  and  the  spirit  of 
the  Book  of  Deuteronomy .'  If  the  latter  speaks  only  of  the 
priests  the  sons  of  Levi,  never  of  the  sons  of  Aaron,  the 
same  formula  is  invariably  used  by  Jeremiah.  Both  Jeremiah 
and  the  Deuteronomist  use  the  word  ToraJi  in  the  singular 
only,  and  apply  it  to  the  whole  Law  :  both  confine  all  sacrifices 
to  the  one  place  which  the  Lord  chooses.  Of  twenty-three  ex- 
pressions, again,  which  occur  on  an  average  eight  times  each 
in  Deuteronomy  and  never  once  in  the  Tetrateuch,  all  but 
six  are  found  repeated  more  or  less  frequently  in  Jeremiah, 
and  of  these  remaining  six  four  are  partially  repeated. " 
Already,  then,  Ave  have  evidence  enough  to  justify  a  sus- 
picion, perhaps  a  strong  suspicion,  that  the  author  of 
Deuteronomy  and  the  author  of  the  prophecies  of  Jeremiah 
was  one  and  the  same  person. 

But  the  history  of  the  reign  of  Josiah  brings  before  us  an 

astonishing  and  mysterious  event,  which,  if  it  occurred  in -the 

history  of  any  other  people  of  the  ancient  world,  we  should 

certainly  submit  to  a  very  rigid  scrutiny.       The  Book  of  the 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  pp.  404-6.  ^  /(^.  p.  411. 


1 863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  547 

Law,  we  are  told,  was  found  in  the  House  of  Jehovah — a  book 
either  unknown  or  forgotten.  Of  its  contents  the  king  knew 
nothing,  and  it  was  evidently  to  him  a  new  revelation,  when 
he  read  in  the  ears  of  the  people  all  the  words  of  the  Book  of 
the  Covenant  which  both  king  and  people  had  all  along  been 
bound  to  keep  but  of  which  both  had  thus  far  lived  in  total 
ignorance.  A  multitude  of  questions  come  crowding  upon 
us.  The  book  was  found  in  the  Temple  ;  but  if  it  was  written 
by  Moses,  where  had  it  been  lying  during  the  interval  of  more 
than  eight  centuries  }  Not  certainly  in  the  ark  itself  There 
the  priest  Hilkiah  could  not  have  found  it,  inasmuch  as  he 
dared  not  to  look  into  it  ;  and  we  have,  further,  the  plain 
statement  in  the  history  (i  Kings  viii.  9)  that  there  was 
nothing  in  the  ark  save  the  two  tables  of  stone.  Nor  could 
it  have  been  lying  outside  the  ark,  for  then  surely  it  would 
have  been  named  among  the  things  brought  into  the  Temple 
by  Solomon. 

"  At  all  events,"  the  Bishop  adds,  "  it  would  have  been  well 
known  to  David  and  Solomon  and  other  pious  kings,  as 
well  as  to  the  successive  high  priests,  and  we  should  not 
find  them  so  regardless  of  so  many  of  its  plain  precepts  as 
the  history  shows  them  to  have  been,"^.^.  with  respect  to 
the  worshipping  on  high  places  and  the  neglect  of  the 
due  observance  of  the  Passover."  ^ 

But  the  book,  further,  itself  gives  the  command,  "  Take  the 
Book  of  the  Law  and  place  it  beside  the  ark  of  the  covenant 
of  Jehovah  your  God,  that  it  may  be  there  for  a  witness 
against  thee  ; "  and  the  suspicion  thus  grows  almost  to  cer- 
tainty that  the  writing  of  the  book,  the  placing  it,  and  the 
finding  it  were  pretty  nearly  contemporaneous  events,  and 
that  if  there  was  no  king  before  Josiah  who  turned  to 
Jehovah  with  all  his  heart  and  soul  and  might  according  to 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  416. 

N  N  2 


548  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

all  the  Law  of  Moses,  it  must  have  been  because  there  was 
no  king  before  him  who  had  ever  seen  this  portion  at  least  of 
the  Pentateuch.  No  one  probably  will  venture  to  say  that 
the  whole  Pentateuch  was  now  found,  or  that  the  whole  could 
have  been  lost.  It  was  clearly  some  book  which  could  be 
read  off  at  a  single  sitting.  The  scribe  Shaphan  read  the 
whole  of  it  to  the  king,  and  the  king  read  the  whole  of  it 
in  the  ears  of  the  people.  The  whole  Pentateuch  certainly 
could  not  be  read  in  a  day  ;  but  the  book  now  found  is  called 
the  Book  of  the  Covenant  ;  and  in  Deuteronomy  we  read, 
"  These  are  the  words  of  the  covenant  which  Jehovah  com- 
manded Moses  to  make  with  the  children  of  Israel  in  the  land 
of  Moab." 

But  the  whole  narrative  of  the  finding  of  the  book  shows 
that  a  searching  reformation  was  needed,  that  there  were  some 
few  at  least  who  were  determined  to  carry  this  reform,  and 
that  a  resolute  attempt  was  made  to  carry  it  out.  The 
popular  and  national  religion  (whatever  may  have  been  that 
of  David,  or  Solomon,  or  even  of  Hezekiah)  had  been  thus  far 
a  gross,  sensual,  and  cruel  idolatry,-  under  which  familiar 
spirits  and  wizards  found  a  shelter  and  a  home,  and  the 
people  abandoned  themselves  to  images,  idols,  and  all  abomi- 
nations. On  this  vast  system  of  superstition  the  earnest  and 
passionate  denunciations  of  the  prophets  had  made  no  real 
impression.  Something  more,  therefore,  must  be  done,  if 
the  social  and  political  order  of  Judah  was  to  be  saved  from 
the  catastrophe  which  had  swept  away  the  kingdom  of 
Israel.  The  Mosaic  and  Levitical  codes,  if  known  at  all, 
were  a  dead  letter  ;  or,  rather,  we  have  no  warrant  whatever 
for  declaring  that  the  main  body  of  the  people  knew  any- 
thing about  them  or  had  ever  heard  of  their  existence.  But 
immediately  after  the  discovery  of  the  book  a  strong  effort 
was  made  to  put  down  the  popular  idolatry,  and  to  celebrate 
a  Passover  as   a  means  of  bringing  together  the  whole  body 


f 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  549 

of  the  people.  With  singular  and  studied  minuteness  we  are 
told  that  never  from  the  days  of  the  Judges  that  judged 
Israel,  nor  in  all  the  days  of  the  Kings  of  Israel,  nor  of  the 
Kings  of  Judah,  was  such  a  Passover  held  as  this  of  the 
eighteenth  year  of  King  Josiah.  But  not  less  astonishing  than 
the  discovery  of  the  book  is  the  fact  that  no  such  Passover,  so 
far  as  we  can  see,  was  ever  held  again,  even  by  Josiah ; 

"  nor  is  there  the  least  indication  that  the  other  two  feasts 
were  kept  by  Josiah  with  similar  solemnity  in  that  same 
year."  ^ 

What  reason  can  be  given  for  this  fact  except  the  further 
fact  that  the  people  were  not  prepared  to  accept  the  religion 
of  the  prophets,  and  that  the  zeal  of  the  king  himself  had 
been  cooled  by  his  becoming  acquainted  with  the  real  circum- 
stances of  the  discovery  t  Anyhow,  neither  king  nor  people 
received  anything  more  than  a  mere  passing  impression  of 
the  Divine  authority  of  the  law  set  forth  in  the  Book  of 
the  Covenant.  The  latter,  like  the  book  of  Exodus,  insisted 
on  the  Divine  command  that  all  the  males  of  the  Jewish 
nation  should  appear  thrice  each  year  before  Jehovah  their 
Elohim  ;  and  this  command  was  never  obeyed  at  all  even 
by  Josiah.  From  all  these  circumstances  what  conclusion  is 
to  be  drawn  .''  Five  years  only  before  the  discovery  of  the 
Book  of  the  Covenant  Jeremiah  had  felt  himself  called  to 
undertake  the  prophetical  office  ;  and  certainly  no  prophet 
had  ever  entered  on  his  life's  work  with  a  deeper  sense  of 
responsibility,  and  a  more  overwhelrriing  assurance  that  unless 
there  were  a  change  for  the  better,  the  fabric  of  Jewish 
society  must  speedily  be  overturned  altogether.  But  what 
could  he  do  ?  The  prophets  Joel,  Hosea,  Amos,  Isaiah, 
Micah,  had  all  spoken,  and  seemingly  to  little  purpose. 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  419. 


550  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

"  Their  words  had  not  availed  to  keep  back  the  people  from 
those  deadly  sins  which  had  already  brought  down  upon 
the  Ten  Tribes  a  fearful  judgement,  and  threatened  before 
long  a  yet  more  terrible  woe  upon  Judah  and  Jerusalem. 
What  if  the  authority  of  the  great  Lawgiver  should  be 
brought  to  bear  upon  them  t  And  since  the  Law  Book,  as 
it  then  existed,  was  not  well  suited  for  the  present  necessity, 
with  its  long  details  of  the  lives  of  their  forefathers,  .  .  . 
as  well  as  its  minute  directions  about  artistic  and  ceremonial 
matters — what  if  the  very  spirit  of  the  older  Law  should  be 
summed  up  in  a  powerful  address  .  .  .  such  as  he  would 
have  delivered  if  now  present  with  his  people,  and  put 
into  the  mouth  of  the  departing  lawgiver." 

But  if  such  a  thought  arose,  as  we  are  bound  to  suppose 
that  it  did  arise,  in  the  mind  of  the  prophet,  this  thought 
would  most  assuredly  assume  for  him  the  form  of  a  Divine 
command. 

"  All  question  of  deception,  or  frans  pia^  would  vanish  ;  and 
Huldah  too,  in  like  manner,  if  she  knew  of  what  was  being 
done,  would  consider,  not  whether  it  was  right  or  wrong  to 
speak  to  the  Jews  in  the  name  of  Moses,  but  what  might 
happen,  since  those  threats  of  coming  judgement,  thus 
spoken,  were  uttered  by  Divine  inspiration,  and,  therefore^ 
were  certainly  true."  ' 

This,  if  the  report  of  the  narrative  may  be  received  as 
correct,  is  precisel}-  what  she  did.  Her  words  make  no 
reference  to  Moses.  She  does  not  even  refer,  as  Josiah  refers, 
to  the  disobedience  of  their  forefathers.  She  speaks  merely 
of  the  judgements  impending  for  the  present  misdoings  of 
the  people  and  their  rulers,  and  without  implying  that  the 
book  discovered  was  an  old  one,  the  work  of  Moses,  she 
confines  herself  to  declaring  that  the  evil  threatened  should 
surely  come  to  pass.  The  step,  accordingly,  was  taken.  The 
book  thus  found  was  read  to  the  king,  and  by  the  king  read 
1  Petitatcnch,  Part  III.  p.  428. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  551 

to  the  people.  The  impression  made  was  vivid  and  keen  ; 
but  it  was  not  lasting,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  the  zeal  even  of 
Josiah  himself  seems  to  have  been  chilled  by  the  discovery 
that  the  warnings  and  promises  of  the  Deuteronomist  came 
from  a  teacher  of  his  own  age  and  not  from  the  lawgiver  of 
whom  the  book  spoke  as  having  died  upon  the  mountain 
of  Nebo. 

But  if  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  is  not  the  work  of  the 
author  or  authors  of  the  Tetrateuch,  we  may  safely  infer  that 
an  examination  of  its  contents  will  exhibit  contradictions  with 
the  earlier  narratives  ;  and  this  is,  in  fact,  the  case.  The  dis- 
courses of  this  fifth  book  are  said  to  be  uttered  in  the  hearing 
of  all  Israel,  a  population,  according  to  the  older  story,  of  some 
three  or  four  millions  ;  and  beyond  doubt  the  phrase  is  not  to 
be  interpreted  as  denoting  only  the  chiefs  and  elders  of  the 
people,  for  the  lawgiver  himself  in  his  address  is  represented 
as  saying,  "  Ye  stand  this  day,  all  of  you,  before  Jehovah 
your  God,  your  captains  of  your  tribes,  your  elders  and 
your  officers  and  all  the  men  of  Israel,  your  little  ones,  your 
wives,  and  the  stranger  that  is  in  thy  camp,  from  the  hewer 
of  thy  wood  to  the  drawer  of  thy  water."  The  writer  never 
thought  of  historical  impossibility,  as  he  never  thought  of 
geographical  incongruities,  when,  speaking  of  an  unknown 
country  traversed  for  the  first  time,  he  mentions  that  "  there 
are  eleven  days'  journey  from  Horeb  by  way  of  Mount  Seir 
unto  Kadesh-barnea."  But,  further,  he  makes  Moses  address 
the  generation  which  came  out  from  Egypt,  whereas,  if  the 
Tetrateuch  is  to  be  trusted,  they  had  all  died  during  the  forty 
years'  wanderings.  In  the  earlier  story,  the  appointing  of  the 
seventy  elders  to  lighten  the  toil  of  Moses  takes  place  before 
the  giving  of  the  law  at  Sinai  :  in  Deuteronomy  it  takes  place 
a  year  later,  when  they  are  just  about  to  leave  Horeb.^  In 
Deuteronomy,  again,  the  sending  of  the  spies  is  a  suggestion 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  433. 


552  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

of  the  people,  which  pleases  Moses  well  :  in  the  Book  of 
Numbers  (xiii.  i,  2),  it  is  an  express  command  of  Almighty 
God.  Of  the  long  sojourn  in  the  wilderness  the  other  books 
have  very  little  to  tell  us  ;  in  Deuteronomy  a  period  of  seven- 
and-thirty  years  is  dismissed  in  the  single  phrase  that  they 
"  abode  many  days  in  Kadesh"  (i.  46).  In  all  the  books  the 
Israelites  are  depicted  as  an  idol-loving  people  ;  but  the  cha- 
racter of  their  idolatry  in  the  Tetrateuch  is  not  the  character 
of  their  idolatry  in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy.  In  the  latter 
they  are  mentioned  as  being  addicted  to  the  worship  of  the 
hosts  of  heaven,  which  in  the  historical  books  (2  Kings  xvii- 
16)  is  first  named  as  one  of  the  sins  for  which  the  Ten  Tribes 
were  carried  into  captivity,^  and  seems  to  have  been  first 
generally  practised  in  Judah  in  the  reign  of  Manasseh,  the 
grandfather  of  Josiah.  The  latter  king  made,  indeed,  a 
vigorous  cfibrt  to  suppress  it  ;  but  the  denunciations  of 
Zephaniah  and  Jeremiah  show  that  it  revived  again  even 
during  his  life-time.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  this 
worship  is  nowhere  mentioned  in  the  Tetrateuch,  and  that 
the  phrases  which  describe  it  arc  found  only  in  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy. 

But,  in  truth,  the  mind  of  the  Deuteronomist  was  not  set 
upon  the  avoiding  of  discrepancies.  He  is  thinking  of  his 
own  time  when  he  represents  Moses  speaking  of  the  Israelites 
as  dwelling  in  a  land  from  which  great  nations  had  been 
driven  out  before  them,  "  as  it  is  this  day "  ;  and  again  and 
again  he  insists  that  the  men  who  listened  to  the  recapitula- 
tion of  the  Law  were  the  very  men  who  had  witnessed  the 
giving  of  the  Law  at  Sinai.  The  covenant,  he  says,  was  made 
"  not  with  our  fathers,  but  with  us,  even  us,  who  are  all  of  us 
here  alive  this  day  "  (Deuteronomy  v.  2-5) ;  and  again, "  I  speak 
not  with  your  children,  which  have  not  known  His  miracles  and 
His  acts  which  He  did  in  the  midst  of  Egypt,  ....  buf  your 
^  Pentateuch^  Part  III.  p.  444. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  553 

eyes    have    seen    the  great  acts   of  Jehovah  which  He  did " 
(Deuteronomy  xi.  2-7). 

Nor  is  the  writer  careful  about  other  things,  as  to  which  it 
might  be  supposed  that  the  popular  feeling  would  be  most 
sensitive.  He  gives  the  Decalogue  as  it  is  given  in  Exodus  : 
but  he  assigns  a  totally  different  reason  for  the  observance  of 
the  Sabbath  day.  If  some  of  the  marvels  mentioned  in  the 
other  books  are  not  to  be  found  in  Deuteronomy,  others  are 
introduced  which  are  not  found  in  the  Tetrateuch,  among 
these  being  the  wonderful  preservation  of  the  shoes  and 
clothes  of  the  Israelites.  Later  superstition  hit  upon  the 
notion  that  the  garments  of  the  children  grew  with  their 
growth  :  it  is  sufficiently  remarkable  that  such  durability  was 
imparted  to  their  raiment  that  the  men  of  one  generation 
could  hand  them  on  as  good  as  new  to  those  of  another.  In 
Deuteronomy  ix.  3,  the  writer  speaks  of  the  rapid  extermina- 
tion of  the  Canaanitish  tribes,  forgetting  that  a  little  while 
before  (vii.  22)  he  has  forbidden  this  destruction.^  In  Exodus 
(xxxiv.  29),  the  two  stone  tables  with  the  Decalogue  graven 
on  them  are  in  the  hands  of  Moses  before  any  receptacle  has 
been  made  in  which  they  may  be  placed.  In  Deuteronomy 
(x.),  the  ark  is  actually  made  before  Moses  goes  up  into  the 
mount  to  receive  the  second  tables.  But  the  Bishop  urges 
that  the  account  in  Exodus  renders  this  impossible. 

"  Not  only  is  there  nothing  said  about  the  ark  in  Exodus 
(xxxiv.  i),  where  he  is  commanded  to  make  the  tables  ; 
but  it  is  only  after  coming  down  with  the  second  set  of 
tables  that  Moses  summons  the  wise-hearted  to  come  and 
make  the  ark,"  ^ 

In  Deuteronomy  (x.  6,  7),  the  death  of  Aaron  is  described  as 
happening  before  the  separation  of  the  Levites  ;  according  to 
the  Book  of  Numbers  the  separation  takes  place  nearly  forty 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  452.  ^  lb.  p.  454. 


554  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  xk 

years  before  hisdeath.^  In  the  former  Aaron  dies  at  Moserah: 
in  the  latter  he  dies  on  Mount  Hor,  some  five  stations  beyond 
Moserah.  In  the  former  the  tribe  of  Levi  are  set  apart  to 
bear  the  ark :  in  the  latter  the  duty  belongs  to  the  sons  of 
Kohath,  not  to  the  Levites  generally.  While,  again,  the  Deut- 
eronomist  (xi.  6)  mentions  the  destruction  of  Dathan  and 
Abiram,  he  says  nothing  of  Korah,  manifestly  because  he 
knows  no  distinction  between  priests  and  Levites,  and  there- 
fore sees  no  great  wrong  in  a  Levite  seeking  the  priesthood 
also. 

But  it  is  in  Deuteronom}-  that  for  the  first  time  we  hear  of 
Jehovah  choosing  one  special  place  out  of  all  the  tribes  to  put 
His  name  there.  The  earlier  kings,  no  doubt,  thought  of 
attracting  the  affections  of  the  people  to  Jerusalem  ;  but  the 
idea  of  making  attendance  at  Mount  Sion  compulsory  three 
times  a  year  could  hardly  have  arisen  in  an  age  when  Solomon 
sacrificed  and  burnt  incense  on  the  high  places,  and  especially 
at  the  "great  high  place"  of  Gibeon.  The  great  prophets  of 
Israel  are  never  spoken  of  as  going  up  to  Jerusalem  to  keep 
the  Passover ;  and  the  most  pious  kings  (Asa,  Amaziah,' 
Uzziah,  Jotham,  and  others)  brought  their  offerings  to  other 
altars  than  that  erected  in  the  Temple,  which  they  could  not 
have  done  if  this  exclusive  law  had  been  then  in  existence,  or 
if,  on  the  supposition  of  its  existence,  it  had  been  regarded  as 
of  Mosaic  origin.-  The  growth  of  a  tendency  to  visit  Jeru- 
salem on  occasions  of  extraordinary  solemnity  is  undeniable. 
The  erection  of  the  tabernacle  on  Mount  Zion  seems  to  have 
been  contemporaneous  with  the  discontinuance  of  the  older 
sanctuaries  at  Ramah,  Bethel,  Mizpch,  &c.  ;  and  the  acts  of 
Jeroboam  show  with  sufficient  clearness  how  great  for  him 
was  the  need  of  counteracting  the  impulse  which  might  draw 
his  subjects  to  the  sanctuary  of  the  rival  kingdom.  The  com- 
mand that  all  males  should  go  up  to  Jerusalem  yearly  at  each 
1  Pentateuch^  Part  III.  p.  456.  "^  lb.  p.  467. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  COMPOSITION.  555^ 


of  the  great  feasts  seems  rather  to  point  to  a  time  after  the  fall 
of  the  Israelitish  kingdom,  when  there  remained  only  the 
small  centralised  kingdom  of  Judah.  In  fact,  there  is  only 
one  indication  of  the  rule  having  ever  been  acted  upon  ;  and 
this  solitary  instance  was,  as  we  have  seen,  at  the  great  Pass- 
over of  King  Josiah,  when  this  very  Book  of  Deuteronomy 
had  just  been  found  in  the  Temple.  Nay,  further,  the  best 
kings  of  Judah,  after  the  setting  up  of  the  ark  at  Jerusalem, 
are  spoken  of  in  the  Books  of  Kings,  without  any  very  strong 
words  of  censure,  as  allowing  the  people  still  to  sacrifice  in 
the  high  places. 

"  It  can  hardly,  therefore,"  the  Bishop  urges,  "  be  believed  that 
the  strongest  commands  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  to 
utterly  destroy  all  the  high  places  of  the  heathen  and  sacri- 
fice to  Jehovah  only  at  Jerusalem  could  have  been  read  and 
studied  by  these  pious  princes,  much  less  copied  (as  Deutero- 
nomy xvii.  1 8-20  directs)  by  each  of  them  with  his  own  hand, 
when  seated  on  the  throne  of  his  kingdom.  More  especially 
does  this  apply  to  the  case  of  Joash,  who  began  to  reign 
when  seven  years  old,  and  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life  was 
directed  wholly  by  the  high  priest  Jehoiada." 

The  condition  of  the  Levites  in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy 
is  another  point  which  presents  a  perplexing  contrast  with 
the  pictures  of  the  Tetrateuch.  In  the  latter  they  are  spoken 
of  as  about  to  be  settled  in  forty-eight  cities  as  their  exclusive 
possession,  and  as  being  abundantly  supplied  from  the  free- 
will offerings  and  sacrifices  of  the  people.  In  Deuteronomy 
they  are  depicted  as  being  likely  to  be  in  a  very  necessitous 
condition  and  living  as  stragglers  in  the  land,  in  "  any  of  the 
gates  of  the  people,"  in  a  state  of  utter  poverty  and  depend- 
ence,i  which  is  compared  with  that  of  the  widow,  the  stranger, 
and  the  fatherless.  The  Book  of  Numbers  speaks  of  them  as 
intitled  by  the  command  of  God  Himself  to  all  the  tenth  of 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  473. 


556  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

Israel  for  an  inheritance.  No  such  claim  is  ever  even  hinted 
at  in  Deuteronomy,  where  the  Levite  is  pointed  out  as 
an  object  for  pure  compassion,  as,  in  short,  a  stranger  and 
sojourner  within  the  gates  of  others. 

"  And  all  this  ....  is  supposed  to  be  said  by  Moses  only  a 
few  months  after  the  laws  had  been  laid  down  by  Jehovah 
Himself,  which  provided  for  them  abundant  supplies  of 
food,  and  cities  of  their  own  with  their  suburbs,  thirty  for 
the  Levites,  twelve  for  the  priests." 

With  this  picture  of  the  impoverished  state  of  the  Levites,  the 
statements  of  the  historical  books  are  in  close  agreement.  In 
the  Second  Book  of  Kings  the  number  of  the  priests  is  ex- 
tremely small.  In  the  days  of  Josiah  there  was  a  "  chief 
priest,"  some  "  priests  of  the  second  order,"  and  "  others  who 
are  keepers  of  the  door."  In  the  time  of  his  son  Zedekiah  there 
were  only  five  priests  ministering  in  the  Temple  ;  nor  is  this 
surprising  when  we  remember  that  three  temples  of  Solomon 
might  have  been  placed  on  the  ground  now  occupied  by  the 
church  of  St.  Martin's-in-the-Fields  in  London.^  It  is  true 
that  the  Chronicles  speak  of  David  as  attended  at  Hebron  by 
4,600  Levites  and  3,700  priests  of  the  sons  of  Aaron  (i  Chron- 
icles ii.  26-28)  ;  but  it  is  also  true  that  the  historian  of  the 
Book  of  Kings  (i,  iv.  4)  makes  mention  only  of  two  priests  after 
the  transference  of  the  ark  to  the  tabernacle  on  Mount  Zion. 
The  fact  is  that  the  chronicler  cared  nothing  for  truth  when- 
ever it  clashed  with  his  purpose.  His  very  design  was  to 
exhibit  as  real  a  state  of  things  which  had  no  being  except  in 
his  own  brain  ;  and  it  was  as  easy  for  him  to  attach  ten  thou- 
sand, as  to  attach  ten,  priests  to  the  Solomonian  temple.  He 
could,  therefore,  with  the  utmost  complacency,  speak  of  David 
as  collecting  for  the  temple  which  his  son  was  to  build  a 
hundred  thousand  talents  of  gold  (;^ 5 00,000,000),  and  a  million 

1  Pentateuch^  Part  III.  p.  485. 


1863.     ,     THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  557 

talents  of  silver  (^^3 5 3,000,000),  and  at  the  same  time  declare 
with  cool  effrontery  that  these  vast  sums  (which,  with  the 
contributions  of  David's  great  men,  reach  the  stupendous 
total  of  not  much  less  than  ;^900,ooo,ooo,  a  sum  far  exceeding 
the  national  debt  of  Great  Britain)  were  gathered  together  by- 
David  in  his  trouble  ;  nay,  more,  that  this  enormous  mass  of 
gold  and  silver,  which  could  have  little  or  no  value  except  as 
a  purchasing  power,  was  exclusive  of  vast  stores  of  timber, 
and  of  brass  and  iron  without  weight, — and  all  this  for  a 
building  which  the  Church  of  St.  Martin's-in-the-Fields  could 
contain  three  or  four  times  over.^ 

But  the  priests  and  Levites,  though  their  numbers  were 
thus  scanty,  were  miserably  poor  and  almost  starving.  The 
earlier  laws  of  the  Pentateuch  assign  for  their  support  the 
tithes  and  firstlings.  There  is  not  the  slightest  sign  that  these 
were  paid  ;  and  the  inference  follows  either  that  these  laws 
were  unknown  to  the  people  generally,  or  that,  if  known,  they 
were  not  regarded  as  of  any  special  authority.  Not  onh^, 
indeed,  were  the  priests  wretchedly  indigent,  but  the  Temple 
itself  was  often  either  disused  or  closed.  The  chronicler  him- 
self, not  heeding  the  inconsistency  of  his  words  with  his  other 
pictures  of  priestly  greatness,  draws  a  pitiable  picture  (2  Chron- 
icles xxix.  7-16)  of  the  uncleanness  and  desolation  of  the 
Temple,  thus  admitting  that  the  worship  and  the  house  of  Jeho- 
vah were,  to  say  the  least,  very  thoroughly  unpopular  ;  and  he 
admits  further  that  Ahaz  actually  shut  up  the  Temple,  which 

1  Lectures  on  the  Moabite  Stone,  p.  341.  This  volume,  published  in 
1S73,  is  an  excellent  summary  of  the  Bishop's  critical  work,  prepared 
especially  in  the  hope  that  it  might  be  found  useful  to  teachers  in  day 
schools  and  Sunday  schools,  as  well  as  to  parents  among  the  more 
educated  laity,  who  may  wish  to  show  their  children  the  real  nature  of 
these  books  which  have  had  so  prominent  a  part  in  the  religious  education 
of  the  race.  The  account  of  the  Moabite  stone  in  the  concluding  lecture 
would,  at  least,  show  them  that  there  were  other  versions  of  the  narratives 
found  in  the  more  trustworthy  of  the  historical  books  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures. 


558  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

he  could  hardly  have  done  if  the  Levites  had  possessed  the 
power  which  the  chronicler  ascribes  to  them.  The  reforms 
of  Hezekiah  brought  about  a  change  for  the  better.  The 
priests  now  allowed  that  they  had  enough  to  eat  (2  Chronicles 
xxxi.  10),  and,  in  place  of  the  tithe  which  seemingly  had 
never  been  paid  to  them,  the}-  were  suffered  to  share  in  the 
sacrificial  offerings  of  the  faithful,  in  strict  accordance  with 
the  language  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  the  composition 
of  which  seems  thus  again  to  belong  to  a  period  later  than 
that  of  Hezekiah. 

Differences  between  the  statements  of  Deuteronomy  and 
those  of  the  preceding  books  meet  us,  indeed,  everywhere. 
The  writers  in  Exodus  (xxiii.  11)  and  Leviticus  (xxv.  1-7) 
enjoin  that  in  every  seventh  year  the  whole  land  shall  be 
allowed  to  lie  fallow,  and  enjoy  its  Sabbath  without  being 
troubled  by  either  ploughing  or  sowing  ;  but  not  one  word  is 
said  about  the  cancelling  of  debts  for  those  who  at  the  end  of 
the  six  years  have  been  unable  to  pay  them.  The  Deutero- 
nomist  (xv.  i-ii)  enjoins  the  release  of  insolvent  debtors  in 
the  seventh  year,  but  says  nothing  of  the  duty  of  suffering  the 
land  to  lie  idle.  In  short,  the  whole  history  of  the  Hebrew 
people  gives  no  indication  that  the  law  relating  to  the  Sab- 
batical year  was  ever  once  obeyed. ^  Critics  who  wish  to 
uphold  the  traditional  view  plead  that  the  Sabbath  year  was 
prescribed  by  all  lawgivers,  although  it  was  first  carried  out 
in  the  post-Captivity  time  ;  but  this  still  leaves  us  facing 
the  alternative  either  that  up  to  that  time  this  law  was 
unknown,  or  that,  if  known,  it  was  not  looked  upon  as 
authoritative. 

It  is  true  that  Bishop  Harold  Browne  faces  such  difficulties 
with  an  almost  light-hearted  cheerfulness.  The  Israelites  had 
a  strange  way  of  hearing  commands  of  the  most  solemn  kind, 
and  not  heeding  them. 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  496. 


1 863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  559 

^'  We  know  that  circumcision,  the  very  bond  of  the  covenant, 
the  initiatory  rite  of  Judaism,  Avas  neglected  till  the  people 
came  to  Gilgal." 

But  the  negative  in  this  case  is  not  confined  to  the  people. 
The  Bishop  of  Natal  may  well  express  his  amazement  at  such 
a  plea  as  this. 

"  As  if  this  fact  itself,  which  Bishop  Browne  states  so  quietly, 
did  not  involve  a  stupendous  difficulty,  as  great  as  any 
which  I  have  set  forth  in  Part  I.  For  who  can  believe  that 
Moses,  after  having  actually  written  the  account,  in  Genesis 
xvii.,  of  the  solemn  institution  of  the  rite  by  Almighty 
God  Himself ;  .  .  .  .  after  having  been  expressly  warned  in 
person  of  the  danger  of  neglecting  the  rite  by  the  occurrence 
recorded  in  Genesis  iv.  24-26  ;  after  having  been  again 
reminded  of  his  duty  in  this  respect  by  the  words  pro- 
nounced to  him  by  Jehovah,  on  the  occasion  of  the  Pass- 
over, on  the  very  night  of  the  Exodus,  ....  would  yet, 
under  the  holy  mount  itself,  fresh  from  his  daily  com- 
munings with  God — when  they  rested  for  nearly  twelve 
months  together  in  one  place,  and  everything,  place,  time, 
circumstances,  combined  to  assist  the  discharge  of  this 
primary  duty — have  allowed  the  people  entirely  to  neglect 
having  their  children  circumcised,  during  all  his  life-time 
for  forty  years  together.  The  thing  is  utterly  incredible  ; 
and  no  stronger  proof  of  the  unhistorical  character  of  the 
Pentateuchal  story  can  be  produced  than  the  very  fact 
itself  to  which  Bishop  Browne  appeals  as  helping  him 
partially  out  of  his  difficulty." 

If,  however,  there  is  anyone  thing  which  in  the  historical  books 
is  spoken  of  as  a  deliberate  lapse  on  the  part  of  the  Hebrews, 
it  is  the  substitution  of  a  visible  and  earthly  monarchy  for  the 
theocracy  under  which  they  are  supposed  thus  far  to  have 
lived.  The  thought  of  and  the  desire  for  this  change  are 
spoken  of  by  Samuel  as  a  great  sin, "  Your  wickedness  is  great 
which  ye  have  done  in  the  sight  of  Jehovah  in  asking  for  a 


56o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

king  ; "  and  his  words  extort  from  the  people  the  confession 
that  they  had  added  to  all  their  sins  this  evil,  "  to  ask  us  a 
king." 

"  Nay,  Jehovah  Himself  is  introduced  as  saying  to  Samuel 
'  They  have  not  rejected  thee,  but  they  have  rejected  Me, 
that  I  should  not  reign  over  them.'  "  ^ 

But  on  the  supposition  that  Deuteronomy  is  Mosaic,  both 
Samuel  and  the  people  had  before  them  a  law  with  which  they 
were  bound  to  be  acquainted,  which  spoke  of  this  change  as 
one  likely  or  sure  to  come,  and  which  did  not  denounce  the 
thought  of  it  or  the  desire  of  it  as  sinful  or  wrong  at  all.  All 
that  the  lawgiver  does  (Deuteronomy  xvii.  14-17)  is  to  add 
certain  cautions  as  to  the  policy  which  the  Jewish  kings  ought 
to  follow,  while  there  is  not  a  word  to  imply  that  the  institu- 
tion of  monarchical  government  Avould  in  itself  be  an  offence 
in  the  sight  of  Jehovah.  It  is  inconceivable  that  Samuel 
should  have  spoken  as  he  did,  if  the  Deuteronomistic  Law  had 
been  known  to  him  ;  and  inconceivable  also  that  the  people,  if 
acquainted  with  it,  should  not  have  adduced  it  as  a  complete 
justification  of  their  conduct,  instead  of  abasing  themselves 
before  him  in  an  agony  of  humiliation  ;  and  if  it  was  un- 
known both  to  the  seer  or  judge  and  to  his  people,  is  it  possible 
to  resist  the  conclusion  that  in  their  age  the  Book  of  Deutero- 
nomy was  not  written  ? 

But  not  only  did  the  Deuteronomist  speak  of  the  establish- 
ment of  the  monarchy  as  a  certain  event  of  the  future  ;  not 
only  did  he  prescribe  the  lines  of  their  policy  and  forbid  them 
to  form  an}-  connexion  with  Misraim  :  he  further  imposed  on 
each  king  the  solemn  duty  of  writing  with  his  own  hand  "  a 
copy  of  this  Law  in  a  book,"  "  and  it  shall  be  with  him,  and  he 
shall  read  therein  all  the  days  of  his  life."  Well  may  the 
Bishop  ask : — 

•  '  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  509. 


1 863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  561 

"  What  sign  is  there  that  either  David  or  Solomon  each  made 
a  copy  for  himself  of  this  Law,  or  that  any  of  the  best  kings 
did  so — even  Joash,  as  a  youth,  under  the  '  direction  '  of  the 
chief  priest  Jehoiada  ?  If  they  did,  pious  kings  as  they  were, 
how  is  it  to  be  explained  that  they  completely  neglected  its 
precepts  in  so  many  points,  as  we  know  they  did, — for 
instance,  in  sacrificing  at  Gibeon  and  other  high  places,  and 
in  not  duly  keeping  the  Passover  ?  On  the  other  hand,  if 
they  did  not  make  a  copy  of  the  Law,  why  was  this  ?  Can 
it  be  believed  that  they  knowingly  omitted  to  do  so — that 
is  to  say,  that,  having  the  Law  itself,  as  is  supposed,  in  their 
hands,  with  prophets  and  priests  to  remind  them  of  their 
duties,  they  wilfully  or  negligently  passed  by  so  solemn,  and 
indeed  so  essential,  a  part  of  their  duty  to  themselves  and 
to  their  people."  ^ 

The  supposition  is  not  merely  wild  but  ludicrous.  Not 
less  than  seventeen  kings  reigned  over  Judah  before  Josiah  ; 
therefore,  there  should  have  been  seventeen  manuscript  copies 
of  the  Law  preserved  in  the  temple,  or  in  the  Royal  archives  ; 
and  if  the  ungodly  kings  had  disregarded  the  command,  these 
were  but  a  small  minority  as  compared  with  the  number  of 
those  who  sought  to  obey  the  Lord  all  the  days  of  their  life. 
There  must,  therefore,  have  been  at  least  some  ten  or  twelve 
copies  of  the  Law  written  out  by  the  hands  of  their  kings  ; 
and  perhaps  not  even  the  great  Alexandrian  library  in  its 
palmiest  days  was  so  rich  in  manuscripts  of  any  one  work. 
But  the  point  is,  not  that  the  copies  were  fewer  than  they 
should  have  been,  but  that  the  book  which  enjoined  the 
making  of  these  copies  was  so  lost  as  to  be  forgotten,  or 
unknown.  Nothing  can  be  more  genuine  than  the  expres- 
sions of  grief  and  shame  on  the  part  of  Josiah,  when  he  hears 
for  the  first  time  words  which  had  never  fallen  on  his  ears 
before.     As  he  listens  to  them,  he  rends  his  clothes.     He  is, 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  512. 
VOL.  I.  00 


562  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

in  fact,  as  well  he  might  be,  utterly  bewildered  ;  and  he  gives 
his  charge  to  Hilkiah  the  priest  and  others,  to  go  and  inquire 
of  the  Lord  on  his  behalf,  and  on  that  of  the  people,  concern- 
ing the  words  of  this  book  that  is  found, — a  charge  that  could 
not  possibly  have  been  given  with  reference  to  a  book  of  which 
a  large  number  of  copies  had  already  been  made  by  the  hands 
of  his  predecessors.  His  mind  is  not  troubled  with  any  historical 
difficulties  ;  nor  does  he  pause  to  reflect  on  the  astonishing 
and  seemingly  incredible  fortune  which  had  attended  a  Law, 
or  rather  a  series  of  discourses  on  law,  uttered  in  the  ears  of 
some  three  or  four  millions  of  people, — discourses  forgotten,  it 
would  seem,  almost  the  moment  after  their  utterance,  and, 
to  say  the  least,  passing  away  without  making  the  faintest 
impression  either  on  them  or  on  their  rulers.  To  his  amaze- 
ment, he  must  have  found,  as  he  read  the  book  in  the  presence 
of  his  subjects,  that  he  was  reading  words  with  which,  as  King 
of  Judah,  he  was  bound,  as  his  predecessors  had  been  bound, 
to  be  familiar ;  but  even  this  pain  was  not  equal  to  the  agony 
with  which  he  discovered  that  this  book  imposed  upon  him  a 
gigantic  work  of  reform,  going  down  to  the  very  roots  of  the 
national  life.  If  he  had  any  regard  for  the  Divine  Law  thus 
made  known  to  him,  he  must  strike  down  abuses  and  abomin- 
ations which  were  rampant  everywhere.  He  must  put  a  ban 
on  practices  which  the  most  righteous  of  the  kings  who  had 
reigned  before  him  had  either  allowed,  or  by  their  own  acts 
sanctioned.  The  task  was  urgent  :  it  was  also  all  but  over- 
whelming. The  young  king  braced  himself  to  it  with  heroic 
courage.  The  reforms  enjoined  were  carried  out  to  the  utter- 
most of  his  power ;  but  it  must  soon  have  become  mournfully 
evident  that  the  general  establishment  and  the  permanent 
maintenance  of  the  new  state  of  things  was  hopeless  ;  and 
the  certainty  of  eventual  failure  seems  to  have  weighed  like 
lead  on  the  zeal  even  of  one  whose  heart,  in  the  words  of  Huldah> 
was  so  tender  as  that  of  Josiah.     The  effort  was  made  to  hold 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  563 

a  Passover  in  strict  accordance  with  the  injunctions  of  the 
Deuteronomist  ;  but  it  was  not  followed  by  another,  and  it 
was  left  to  the  priestly  minds  of  the  exilic  or  post-exilic 
time  to  draw  out  the  ideal  picture  of  a  sacerdotal  state  which 
is  depicted  in  the  impossible  narratives  of  the  Books  of 
Chronicles. 

As  then  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  belongs  to  an  age  later 
by  many  centuries  than  that  of  Moses,  it  is  merely  absurd  to 
claim  the  authority  of  his  name  for  particular  passages  in  it, 
as,  for  instance,  for  the  promise  that  God  would  raise  up  a 
prophet  for  His  people  like  to  himself.  This  utterance  thus 
becomes  simply  the  expression  of  a  conviction  that  God  will 
supply  them  with  counsel  and  comfort,  when  they  needed  it,, 
by  sending  some  prophet  such  as  Moses,  and  that  they  will 
never  be  without  a  Divinely  instructed  teacher,  if  only  they 
obey  Him.^  We  are,  in  truth,  dealing  in  this  book  with 
imaginary  commands  issued  in  an  imaginary  past.  Like  the 
writer  in  the  Book  of  Numbers,  the  Deuteronomist  enjoins  on 
the  Israelites  the  setting  apart  of  six  cities  of  refuge  after 
their  work  of  conquest  shall  have  been  accomplished  ;  but  in 
a  previous  passage  the  lawgiver  is  represented  as  having 
himself  set  apart  three  of  these  cities,  and  so  some  critics 
have  been  led  to  suppose  that  there  were  really  nine  cities  of 
refuge.  In  the  history  there  is  no  indication  that  any  such 
cities  ever  existed  ;  -  and  therefore  we  may  infer  that  many 
injunctions  contained  in  the  book  were  rather  intended  to 
convey  a  lesson  and  a  warning  to  his  countrymen  than  to  be 
regarded  as  commands  coming  with  a  Divine  sanction. 
Among  these  are  the  terrible  sentence  to  be  inflicted  on  con- 
quered cities  (Deuteronomy  xx.  10-15),  and  the  treatment 
of  stubborn  and  rebellious  sons  (Deuteronomy  xxi.  18-21). 
The  idolatry  of  the  one,  the  obstinacy  of  the  other,  typified 
sins  of  which  the  Jews  of  Josiah's  age  w^ere  especially  guilty  ; 

1  Petttateiich,  Part  III.  p.  517.  -  lb.  p.  521. 

002 


564  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

and  these  passages  might  serve  at  least  as  a  warning  that 
their  offences  deserved  judgements  not  less  severe.  The  same 
ideal  painting  is  seen  in  the  narrative  of  the  blessings  and 
cursings  pronounced  from  the  heights  of  Ebal  and  Gerizim. 
This  passage  is,  indeed,  singularly  confused  and  perplexing, 
and  the  Bishop  expresses  his  inability  to  explain  it  without 
some  extravagant  assumption  as  to  what  the  writer  has 
omitted  to  state.  On  the  whole,  he  thinks  it  most  probable 
that  the  Deuteronomist  departed  from  his  original  intention. 

"  In  xi.  29,  he  meant  the  tribes  to  pronounce  the  blessings  and 
curses,  and  made  the  arrangement  for  that  purpose  in 
xxvii.  11-13;  but  he  then  decided  to  place  them  in  the 
mouths  of  the  priests,  and  make  the  people  say  '  Amen '  ; 
and  this  he  actually  did  with  the  curses.  But  instead  of 
limiting  himself  in  this  way  with  respect  to  the  blessings, 
he  has  insensibly  been  carried  away  by  hi?  subject,  and 
poured  out  his  full  heart  in-  the  glowing  and  vehement 
words  of  chapter  xxviii.  This  chapter  he  has  now  left 
without  any  introduction  or  explanation,  without  any 
intimation  of  its  connexion  with  the  matter  before  or 
after."  ^ 

« 
Much  speculation  has  been  bestowed  on  the  question  of  the 

physical  possibility  of  such  blessings  and  curses  being,  in 
such  a  position,  so  uttered  as  to  be  heard  by  the  people  and 
duly  responded  to  ;  but  it  is  obviously  a  superfluous  task  so 
to  treat  details  in  the  picture  of  an  ideal  scene. 

The  blessing  of  the  tribes  (Deuteronomy  xxxiii.)  and  the 
song  of  Moses  (Deuteronomy  xxxii.)  are  full,  in  like  manner, 
of  statements  pointing  to  the  late  age  of  the  writer  and  ex- 
hibiting marked  points  of  resemblance  and  agreement  with 
the  expressions  and  the  style  of  Jeremiah.  There  is  no 
separate  blessing  for  Simeon,  because  at  the  time  when  the 
book  was  written  the  tribe  of  Simeon  had  long  since  been 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  547. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  565 

absorbed  in  that  of  Judah  ;  ^  and  Levi  receives  a  eulogy 
singularly  at  variance  with  the  censure  passed  upon  him  in 
the  judgement  of  Jacob.  Giving  up  the  Mosaic  authorship  of 
this  song,  Knobel  holds  that  it  was  composed  during  the  life- 
time of  Saul  and  David  ;  but  there  is  nothing  in  the  position 
of  the  Levites  in  that  age  to  account  for  the  language  here 
addressed  to  them. 

"  They  are  nowhere  even  mentioned  in  that  history,  and, 
indeed,  if  we  were  only  to  form  a  judgement  from  the  more 
authentic  records  of  that  age,  there  is  no  trace  even  of  the 
existence  of  the  tribe  as  one  set  apart  for  religious  duties. 
Even  when  David  had  been  ten  years  on  the  throne,  we 
find  that  the  Levites  were  not  employed  at  the  removal  of 
the  ark — at  least  not  on  the  first  attempt  to  remove  it, 
as  appears  on  the  testimony  of  the  chronicler  himself 
(i  Chronicles  xv.  2,  12,  13)."^ 

But  the  song  seems  to  be  the  work  of  a  priest,  and  Jeremiah 
was  a  priest,  the  son  probably  of  the  chief  priest  Hilkiah  ; 
and  he  would  naturally  hold  the  Levites,  if  known  as  earnest 
and  devout  men,  in  high  estimation, 

"  as  the  guardians  of  the  true  faith  amidst  an  idolatrous  and 
gainsaying  generation.  Well  might  the  writer — a  priest 
himself — utter  for  his  own  brethren  the  prayer,  '  Let  Thy 
Thummim  and  Thy  Urim — Thy  truth  and  Thy  light — be 
ever  with  Thy  holy  one,  whom  TJioii  didst  prove  at  Massah 
(temptation),  tvhoni  Thou  didst  justify  at  the  zvaters  of 
Mej'ibah  (strife) '  ;  i.e.  whom  Thou  dost  expose  now,  as 
Thou  didst  then,  to  the  rebellious,  trying  tempers,  the 
angry  strife  and  turbulence,  of  an  unthankful,  unbelieving 
people." 

The  composition  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  is  thus 
brought  down  to  a  late  age,  and  is  restricted  within  narrow 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  57S  ;  see  also  above,  p.  224. 
2  lb.  p.  585. 


566  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

limits  of  time.  If  it  was  not  written  in  the  reign  of  Josiah 
himself,  it  must  have  been  written  in  that  of  his  father  or 
grandfather.  But  in  that  case  it  must  have  been  composed 
by  some  one  who  hid  the  book  away  in  the  Temple  a  quarter 
of  a  century  perhaps  before  it  was  discovered  there,  and  who 
left  the  fruit  of  so  much  labour  to  the  chances  of  the  future. 

"  He  must  also  have  died  without  betraying  his  secret  ;  .  .  .  . 
nay  without  even  making  any  provision  against  the  possibility 
of  the  book  itself  being  neglected,  destroyed,  or  lost,  while  it 
lay  unknown  and  unheeded  in  the  Temple  during  the  latter 
part  of  Manasseh's  idolatrous  reign."  ^ 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  if  the  book  had  been 
found  and  brought  to  Manasseh,  its  immediate  destruction 
would  have  followed  as  certainly  as  that  of  the  roll  which  was 
cut  to  pieces  and  burnt  by  Jehoiakim  (Jeremiah  xxxvii.). 
But  if  we  allow  that  it  may  have  been  written  in  the  life-time 
of  Manasseh  by  some  one  who  outlived  that  king,  it  then 
seems  even  more 

"  difficult  to  account  for  the  long  and  total  silence  with  respect 
to  the  existence  of  this  book  which  was  maintained  during 
seventeen  years  of  Josiah's  reign,  when  the  king's  docile 
piety  and  youth  would  have  encouraged  the  production  of 
such  a  book,  if  it  really  existed,  and  there  was  such  im- 
perative necessity  for  that  reformation  to  be  begun  as 
soon  as  possible,  with  a  view  to  which  the  book  itself 
was  written."  - 

These  considerations  seem  to  prove  that  the  book  was  in 
process  of  composition  during  these  seventeen  years.  The 
youth  of  the  king,  his  docility,  and  his  deep  religious  earnest- 
ness, gave  special  encouragement  for  any  attempts  to  bring 
about  the  indispensable  reforms.  It  may  not  indeed  have 
been  begun  for   some    time  after  the  death  of  Amon  ;  and 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  III.  p.  6i6.  2  /^  p  5,7 


1 863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  567 

although  two  or  three  years  would  more  than  suffice  for  the 
actual  work  of  composition,  it  was  subjected,  we  may  be  sure, 
to  repeated  revisions  ;  and  the  corrections  thus  made,  as  fresh 
ideas  occurred  from  time  to  time  to  the  writer,  may  in  some 
measure  explain  the  frequent  repetitions  by  which  it  is 
characterised.  But  who  then  was  the  writer  }  The  question 
is  one  of  subordinate  importance,  so  long  as  the  time  of  its 
composition  is  precisely  ascertained.  That  one  who,  in  the 
words  of  Knobel, 

"  took  upon  himself  to  make  so  free  with  the  Law  Book  " 

must  have  been  an  eminent  man  there  can  be  no  doubt  ; 
and 

"  he  can  hardly  have  disappeared  so  completely  from  the 
stage  of  Jewish  history,  without  leaving  behind  any  other 
trace  of  his  existence  and  activity  than  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy." 

But  we  know  that  Jeremiah  lived  in  this  age,  and  that  he 
began  to  prophesy  about  four  or  five  years  before  the  book 
was  found  in  the  Temple  ;  and  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  shut 
our  eyes  to  the  many  and  striking  points  of  likness  and 
even  of  identity  between  the  words,  phrases,  style,  and  tone 
of  thought  in  the  writings  of  the  prophet  and  those  of  the 
Book  of  Deuteronomy. 

The  time  of  the  composition  of  the  book  is  thus  brought 
into  very  close  proximity  with  that  of  its  discovery  ;  and  the 
question  thus  closed  cannot  be  opened  again  on  the  plea 
that  evidence  may  yet  be  produced  which  points  in  another 
direction.     Such  evidence,  however,  is  furnished,  it  is  said, 

"  by  the    fact    that  the    Samaritans,  while   rejecting  all    the 
other   canonical    books    of    the    Jews,    yet    received    the 
Pentateuch  complete,  though,  it  is   true,   with   very  many 
and  important  variations  from  the  Hebrew  copies."  ^ 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  3. 


568  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

The  inference  drawn  is  that  the  Pentateuch  in  its  entirety 
must  have  existed  long  before  the  separation  of  the  two 
kingdoms,  as  otherwise  the  Samaritans  would  never  have 
acquired  possession  of  it ;  and  therefore  that  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy  must  have  been  written  probably  some  ages 
before  the  time  of  Samuel  and  Saul.  The  assumption  is 
really  both  arbitrary  and  groundless  ;  but,  even  if  it  were 
granted,  it  would  still  leave  a  gap  of  some  centuries  before  we 
can  reach  the  age  of  Moses.  It  is  further  argued  that  the 
antagonism  of  the  Jews  and  Samaritans  is  itself  proof  that 
the  acknowledgement  of  the  Pentateuch  as  an  authoritative 
code  by  the  latter  must  be  a  fact  belonging  to  a  time 
preceding  the  revolt  under  Jeroboam, 

These  arguments,  however,  are  of  no  force.  The  Samaritans, 
or  inhabitants  of  the  central  district  of  Palestine,  were  a  mixed 
population,  settlers  introduced  by  the  Assyrian  king  (2  Kings 
xvii.  24)  being  mingled  with  such  Israelites  as  had  not  been 
carried  into  captivity.  This  mixed  population,  we  are  told, 
did  not  "  fear  Jehovah,"  and  a  captive  priest  sent  to  them 
by  the  Assyrian  king  taught  them  how  to  fear  Him  ;  but 
nothing  is  said  about  his  teaching  them  to  keep  the  Law. 
To  this  Law,  as  it  was  understood  in  his  day,  Hezekiah, 
according  to  that  chronicler,  did  what  he  could  to  bring  them 
into  subjection.  But  his  invitation  to  the  Passover  which  he 
sent  throughout  the  country  from  Beersheba  to  Dan  was, 
within  the  borders  of  the  old  Israelitish  kingdom,  rejected 
for  the  most  part  with  contemptuous  mockery,  although  it 
was  accepted  by  some  belonging  to  the  tribes  of  Asher, 
Manasseh,  and  Zcbulon.  But  if  this  story,  coming  as  it  does 
from  the  chronicler,  is  in  a  high  degree  suspicious,  and  seems 
to  be  altogether  discredited  by  the  fact  that  no  mention  is  made 
of  these  efforts  of  Hezekiah  in  the  other  historical  books, 
still  there  can  be  little  doubt  as  to  the  reality  of  the  reform 
attempted   by  Josiah.       This    king,   according    to    the    more 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  COMPOSITION.  569 

trustworthy  historian  (2  Kings  xxiii.),  assailed  the  sanctuar\- 
of  Bethel  itself,  breaking  down  and  burning  the  high  place, 
and  treating  after  the  same  fashion  the  other  high  places  of 
the  Samaritan  cities  made  by  the  Kings  of  Israel. 

Thus,  then,  up  to  this  time  there  is  no  sign  of  the  Law  of 
Jehovah  being  practised  or  even  known  in  Samaria,  or  of  any 
feeling  of  mutual  animosity  between  Jews  and  Samaritans.  ^ 
The  first  symptoms  of  such  a  feeling  were  provoked  about  two 
centuries  later,  when  the  Jews  refused  the  offer  of  the  Samari- 
tans to  take  part  in  the  work  of  rebuilding  the  Temple  at 
Jerusalem.  The  strictness  with  which  the  Law  was  now  in- 
forced  in  the  latter  city  prompted  missionary  efforts  to  inforce 
it  also  on  the  Samaritans  ;  and  perhaps  with  the  sanction 
of  Sanballat  himself  the  missionary  priests  were  enabled  to 
introduce  among  them  the  Pentateuch,  the  only  part  of  the 
Bible  recognised  by  them  to  this  day.  That  the  Samaritan 
text  was  not  constituted  till  after,  and  perhaps  long  after,  the 
return  of  the  Jews  from  the  Captivity,  seems  to  be  proved  by 
the  fact  that  their  text  contains  only  the  Pentateuch.^  In 
other  words,  it  was  received  at  a  time  when  the  Book  of 
Joshua  had  been  already  separated  from  the  five  Books  of 
the  Law,  and  this  separation  is  supposed  to  have  been  first 
made  in  the  time  of  Ezra.  But,  further,  the  Samaritan  text, 
where  it  differs  from  the  Hebrew,  resembles  in  many  instances 
the  Septuagint  version,  the  inference  being  that  the  Samari- 
tans obtained  their  copies  from  the  Alexandrian  Jews  of 
Egypt,  and  that  their  text  was  not  composed  until  nearly 
three  centuries  had  passed  away  from  the  time  of  Ezra. 

If  nothing  more  had  been   needed  than  to   show  that  the 


^  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  7. 

2  The  subject  is  further  examined  by  the  Bishop,  in  the  Pentateuch, 
Part  VI.  chap.  XXV.  But  his  position  is  so  completely  established  that  it 
is  unnecessary  to  enter  on  the  analysis  of  additional  evidence,  which  can 
only  add  strength  to  conclusions  already  incontrovertible. 


570  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  xi. 

Pentateuch  has  in  no  part  the  characteristics  of  genuine  con- 
temporary narrative,  that  the  story  is  full  of  contradictions 
and  impossibilities,  that  it  contains  an  elaborate  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  legislation  which  does  not  belong  to  the  age  to 
which  it  is  ascribed,  and  which  was  never  carried  out,  the 
Bishop's  work  would  at  this  point  have  been  practically  at  an 
end.  All  this  he  had  done  with  a  completeness  which  left 
scarcely  a  loophole  for  objections,  and  certainly  none  for 
objections  of  any  cogency.  But  it  was  necessary,  further, 
to  show  that  the  Pentateuch  was  in  every  part  a  composite 
work. 

Even  in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  which,  as  a  whole,  was 
beyond  doubt  the  production  of  one  master-mind,  insertions 
of  other  hands  are  plainly  discernible.  But  in  the  Book  of 
Genesis  there  is  no  such  harmony  of  plan  or  of  style.  It 
is  a  patchwork  of  materials  contributed  by  different  writers  in 
different  ages  ;  and  it  became  necessary,  therefore,  to  prove 
this  in  refutation  of  theories  and  notions  which  regarded  it  as 
from  beginning  to  end  the  composition  of  Moses.  That  the 
two  chief  contributors  are  the  Elohist  and  the  Jehovist,  the 
former  characterised  by  the  constant  use  of  the  name  of 
Elohim  for  God,  the  other  by  the  intermixture  with  it  of  the 
name  Jehovah,  we  have  already  seen.  The  narratives  of 
these  two  writers  seldom  harmonize,  and  often  directly  con- 
tradict each  other.  The  variations  between  the  Elohistic  and 
the  Jehovistic  accounts  of  the  Creation  have  been  already 
noticed  ;  and,  except  for  the  strange  traditional  notions  which 
blind  men's  eyes  to  facts,  it  would  be  scarcely  necessary  to  say 
anything  about  the  conflicting  details  in  the  two  stories  of  the 
Noachian  Deluge.  In  the  Elohistic  tale  Noah  is  ordered  to 
take  two  of  every  living  thing  ;  in  the  Jehovistic  every  clean 
beast  and  every  clean  fowl  is  to  be  taken  by  sevens.  On  this 
contradiction  it  is  enough  to  cite  the  words  of  perhaps  the 
most  learned  of  Jewish  critics  of  the  present  century. 


1 863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  571 

*'  All  the  attempts,"  says  Dr.  Kalisch,  "  at  arguing  away  this 
discrepancy  have  been  utterly  unsuccessful.  The  difficulty 
is  so  obvious  that  the  most  desperate  efforts  have  been 
made.  Some  regard  the  second  and  third  verses  as  the 
later  addition  of  a  pious  Israelite,  while  Rabbinical  writers 
maintain  that  six  pairs  were  taken  by  Noah,  but  one  pair 
came  to  him  spontaneously.  Is  it  necessary  to  refute  such 
opinions  ?  We  appeal  to  every  unbiased  understanding. 
The  Bible  cannot  be  abused  to  defy  common  sense, 
to  foster  sophistry,  or  pervert  reasoning,  to  cloud  the  in- 
tellect, or  to  poison  the  heart  with  the  rank  weeds  of 
insincerity."  ^ 

Such  contradictions  as  these  are  glaring  ;  but  the  task  of 
analysing  a  composite  document,  in  which,  although  two 
writers  may  have  had  the  chief  part  in  it,  many  fragments 
from  other  sources  have  been  imbedded,  is  both  intricate 
and  subtle ;  and  those  who  would  appreciate  the  force  of 
the  Bishop's  method,  and  the  general  correctness  of  his 
conclusions,  must  work  their  way  patiently  and  carefully 
through  his  chapters.  But  of  the  method  it  must  be  noted 
that  it  starts  with  no  assumption  of  the  existence  of  charac- 
teristic differences  of  style,  followed  by  the  assigning  to  one 
writer  those  passages  in  which  the  name  of  Elohim  occurs 
predominantly,  and  those  marked  by  the  name  Jehovah  to 
the  other.  In  fact,  the  peculiarity  has  been  deduced  from 
inspection  of  the  two  sets  of  passages  already  separated  ; 
and  these  passages  have  been  discriminated,  and  assigned  to 
their  respective  authors  by  a  rigorous  process  of  deduction 
from  a  great  variety  of  similar  peculiarities,  detected  upon 
a  minute  examination  and  careful  comparison  of  each  pas- 
sage.'"^ But  although  the  handiwork  of  two  writers  can  thus 
be  traced,  there  is  no  valid  reason  for  supposing  that  the 
Jehovistic  narrative   ever   formed  an   independent   connected 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  32.  -  lb.  p.  49. 


572  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

whole.  The  diligence  of  Hupfeld  has  recovered  to  the 
Jehovist,  by  means  of  the  internal  evidence,  many  passages 
which  former  critics  had  assigned  to  the  Elohist  ;  but  all 
these  taken  together  cannot  be  regarded  as  anything  more 
than  fragments.  They  are  not  parts  of  a  compact  whole. 
The  Jehovistic  passages  about  the  Flood  furnish  no  complete 
narrative.  They  say  nothing  about  the  original  order  to 
make  the  ark,  about  the  collection  of  food,  about  the  entry 
of  the  animals  into  the  ark,  or  their  exit  from  it ;  and  if  there 
are  inconsistencies  between  this  account  and  that  of  the 
Elohist,  there  is  nothing  surprising  in  this.     They 

"  might  be  looked  for  under  the  most  favourable  circumstances, 
if  the  interpolator  had  had  the  prime  narrative  before  him 
in  clear  Roman  type,  in  a  printed  volume.  How  much 
more,  it  may  be  said,  when  we  take  into  account  the 
difficulty  of  studying  that  narrative  out  of  a  long  roll, 
consisting  of  many  sheets,  stitched  together,  of  papyrus  and 
parchment  manuscript."^ 

Placing  thus  before  the  reader  the  whole  of  the  Elohistic 
narrative  in  the  first  eleven  chapters  of  Genesis,  followed  by 
the  Jehovistic  insertions  in  these  chapters,  the  Bishop  finds 
himself  compelled  to  compare  both  with  the  great  book  of 
facts  spread  before  us  in  the  phenomena  of  the  sensible  world. 
The  legion  of  subterfuges  and  fictions  by  which  the  tradi- 
tionalism of  the  last  generation  was  kept  up  are  now  for  the 
most  part  dead.  We  may  remember  with  amusement  rather 
than  indignation  the  pleading  that  the  strata  of  the  earth 
were  simulations  of  age,  purposely  designed  to  mislead  those 
who  might  refuse  to  accept  the  chronology  of  Archbishop 
Ussher  ;  that  fossils  instead  of  having  been  animated  structures 
had  been  formed  under  planetary  influences  ;  and  that  the 
mammoth  which   towards   the   end   of  the   last  century  was 

1  Pentatcitch,  Part  I\'.  p.  56. 


i863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  573 

found  in  the  ice  of  the  polar  regions,  in  such  preservation  that 
dogs  and  bears  fed  upon  its  flesh,  had  never  been  a  living 
creature,  but  had  been  created  under  the  ice,  and  there  pre- 
served instead  of  being  transmuted  into  stone,  and  that  all 
organisms  found  in  the  depth  of  the  earth  are  models  created 
in  the  first  day  to  typify  the  living  plants  and  animals  to  be 
produced  in  the  subsequent  days  of  the  creative  week.-^ 

It  is  neither  so  profane  nor  so  absurd  to  assert  that  the 
Bible  was  intended  by  its  writers  to  teach  science.  The  books 
of  the  Pentateuch  assuredly  claim  to  do  so,  and  do  teach  it  to 
the  full  extent  of  the  .knowledge  and  the  ability  of  the  writers. 
The  argument  that  the  Bible  is  exclusively  a  religious  book  is 
characterised  by  Dr.  Kalisch  as  a  bold  fallacy. 

"With  the  same  justice  it  might,"  he  says,  "be  affirmed  that 
the  Bible,  in  describing  the  rivers  of  Paradise,  does  not  speak 
of  geography  at  all,  or  in  inserting  the  grand  list  and 
genealogy  of  nations  (Genesis  x.)  is  far  from  touching  the 
science  of  ethnography.  Taken  in  this  manner  nothing 
would  be  easier,  but  nothing  more  arbitrary,  than  Biblical 
interpretation.  It  is  simply  untrue  that  the  Bible  avoids 
these  questions.  It  has,  in  fact,  treated  the  history  of 
Creation  in  a  most  magnificent  and  comprehensive  manner  : 
it  has  in  these  portions,  as  well  as  in  the  moral  precepts 
of  the  theological  doctrines,  evidently  not  withheld  any 
information  which  it  was   in   its   power  to   impart."  - 

We  have  here  then  such  chronology,  such  archaeology,  such 
geography,  such  ethnology,  such  history,  as  the  writers  had 
acquired,  or  thought  that  they  had  acquired.  What  they  had, 
or  thought  that  they  had,  they  imparted  ;  and  it  would  be 
astounding  indeed  if  their  views  and  conclusions  harmonized 
with  the  knowledge  gained  during  the  millenniums  which 
have  since  passed  away.  It  is  not  as  though  we  had  to 
reconcile  with  this  knowledge  one  statement  only  or  two  in 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  85.  2  /^  p  s;. 


574  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

these  ancient  records.  The  process  must  be  gone  through 
with  all,  and  when  we  fancy  that  we  have  harmonized  one,  we 
find  that  we  have  only  made  the  contradiction  more  glaring 
in  another.  The  very  plea  that  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  were 
not  intended  to  teach  science  shows,  if  it  be  worth  anything, 
that  the  notions  of  Jews  stood  on  the  same  level  with  those  of 
Greeks  or  Romans.  The  distinction  of  the  waters  above  from 
those  below  the  firmament,  the  governing  of  day  and  night  by 
the  sun  and  moon,  the  stars  being  thrown  in  without  any 
special  design  at  all,  are  fancies  as  truthful  and  instructive  as 
the  speculations  of  Ionic  and  other  philosophers  that  the  stars 
were  lamps  lit  every  night,  and  put  out  again  in  the  morning, 
and  that  the  sun  was  a  disk  of  heated  metal  somewhat  bigger 
probably  than  the  Peloponnesos.  Of  the  real  magnitude  of 
the  sun,  of  the  real  distances  of  the  fixed  stars,  neither  Jew 
nor  Greek  had  the  faintest  conception.  It  would  therefore  be 
a  miserable  waste  of  time  to  examine  any  of  their  statements, 
were  it  not  that  these  statements  are  made  still  to  serve  as 
foundations  for  a  mighty  mass  of  superstitions.  We  read  the 
seemingly  simple  declaration,  "To  every  animal  of  the  earth, 
and  to  every  fowl  of  the  air,  ....  I  have  given  every  green 
herb  for  meat."  But  we  forget  to  ask  how  the  beasts  and 
birds  of  prey  were  on  their  creation  to  be  supported,  their 
teeth,  stomachs,  and  their  whole  bodily  conformation  being 
quite  unsuited  to  the  eating  of  herbs  ;  nor  do  we  heed  the 
geological  record  which  shows  us  that  ravenous  creatures 
preyed  upon  their  fellow-creatures  and  lived  upon  flesh  in  all 
ages  of  the  world's  past  history  just  as  they  do  now.^ 

But  if  in  Genesis  we  have  a  history,  or  rather  two  accounts, 
of  the  Creation,  it  is  not  the  only  history  of  this  mighty  work 
which  has  come  down  to  us  from  ancient  days.  Egypt,  India, 
Persia,  Greece,  had  each  its  story  of  Creation,  and  most  of 
them  also  of  a  deluge  ;  and  we  commit  ourselves  not  only  to  a 
^  Pe7itate:icli,  Part  IV.  p.  io8. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  COMPOSITION.  575 

perilous  but  to  a  ludicrous  position,  if  we  assert  that  they 
were  all  borrowed  from  the  Jewish  Scriptures.  It  is  manifest 
that  they  were  not  so ;  and  of  intercourse  between  Jews  and 
Canaanites  and  some  of  these  countries  there  is  not  a  shadow 
of  evidence.  The  Bishop  cites  from  Von  Bohlen  the  Zend 
representation  of  Creation  ;  ^  and  it  is  quite  open  to  any  one 
to  say  that  the  Hebrew  story  is  grander  and  more  impressive. 
Longinus  considered  as  sublime  the  expression,  "  Let  there  be 
light,  and  there  was  light ;  "  but  Von  Bohlen  remarks  that  the 
Vedic  phrase,  "  He  thought,  I  will  create  worlds,  and  they  are 
there,"  is  not  less  sublime.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  phrase  re-echoed  in 
the  words  of  the  Hebrew  psalmist,  "He  spake  the  word,  and 
they  were  made."  If  in  some  few  points  the  Hebrew  cos- 
mogony seems  to  correspond  with  the  geological  record,  the 
same  remark  applies  with  greater  force  to  some  parts  of  the 
Theogoiiy  which  bears  the  name  of  Hesiod. 

If,  however,  the  geographical,-  ethnological,  or  other  state- 
ments in  Genesis,  or  any  other  of  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures,  become  absurd  and  contemptible  when  they  are 
brought  forward  as  the  highest  scientific  standards,  they  are 
neither  contemptible  nor  absurd  when  viewed  in  reference  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  writers.  We  shall  not  be  greatly  tempted 
to  laugh  at  the  notion  that  the  moon  was  probably  of  the  size 
of  a  large  plate  or  salver,  when  we  remark  that  it  was  an 
hypothesis  put  forward  to  account  for  phenomena,  and  that 
these  hypotheses  pointed  to  and  insured  the  true  growth  of 
mind,  and  led  to  the  accumulated  knowledge  which  is  our 
inheritance. 

According  to  Kosmas  Indicopleustes,  the  earth  was  an 
oblong,  with  a  moustain  inhabited  by  gods  in  the  north,  the 
sea  flowing  round  it  on  all  four  sides,  with  the  Paradise  in 
India  beyond  the  sea,  toward  the  east.  Under  the  intervening 
sea,  which  was  caused  by  the  Flood,  and  crossed  by  Noah,  the 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  113. 


57(5  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

Euphrates  and  Tigris  continue  their  course,  and  appear  again 
in  the  western  world,  while  Gihon,  the  Ganges,  becomes  the 
Nile  in  Egypt.  In  its  essential  features  the  geography  of  the 
second  chapter  of  Genesis  is  the  geography  of  Kosmas. 

Nor  is  the  zoology  less  hopelessly  out  of  joint  with  facts 
now  known  to  all.  In  the  Jehovistic  narrative  all  living 
creatures  without  exception  are  brought  before  Adam  to  be 
named  by  him. 

"  But  how  could  the  white  bear  of  the  frozen  zone,  and  the 
humming-bird  of  the  tropics,  have  met  in  one  spot .''  or,  being 
assembled,  how  could  they  have  been  dispersed  to  their 
present  abodes  ?  "  ^ 

The  Bishop  may  well  speak  of  the  handling  of  such  a  ques- 
tion as  this  as  both  a  painful  and  ludicrous  task ;  but  he  felt 
that  he  had  no  alternative  when  the  "  harmony  "  of  Scripture 
with  science  was  supposed  to  be  established  by  the  surmise 
that  those  parts  of  the  earth  which  are  "  far  from  the  boun- 
daries of  man's  first  residence,"  have  become  the  scenes  of 
creative  power  at  epochs  subsequent  to  the  six  days'  work,  in 
the  teeth  of  the  assertion  that  on  the  sixth  day  the  heavens 
and  earth  were  finished  and  all  their  host ;  and  that  the 
animals  brought  to  Adam  to  be  named  must  have  been  those 
only  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Paradise,  in  the  teeth  of  another 
assertion  that  he  gave  names  to  all  the  cattle  and  to  the  fowl 
of  the  heaven,  and  to  every  animal  of  the  field.  The  same 
necessity  compelled  the  Bishop  to  deal  with  the  question  of 
the  origin  of  species.  All  recent  geological  researches  establish, 
for  instance,  the  fact  that  the  sloths,  armadillos,  and  large  ant- 
eaters,  have,  in  Professor  Owen's  words,  "  ever  been,  as  they 
are  now,  peculiar  to  America,"  as  likewise  "  the  two  species  of 
orang  are  confined  to  Borneo  and  Sumatra,"  and  "  the  two 
species  of  chimpanzee  to  an  inter-tropical  tract  of  the  western 

part  of  Africa." 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  131. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  577 

But,  if  this  be  so,  what  grounds  have  we  for  holding  that 
all  types  of  the  great  human  family  are  resolvable  into  one 
only  ?  For  such  a  notion  there  is  absolutely  no  warrant, 
apart  from  an  old  Hebrew  tale  which  is  shivered  into  fragments 
as  we  handle  it.  To  adduce  in  support  of  it  the  statement  of 
St.  Paul,  that  God  has  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men 
to  dwell  on  the  earth,  is  to  bring  in  a  wholly  irrelevant  con- 
sideration. No  one  disputes  this  truth  ;  but  it  would  be  not 
less  true  to  say,  that  God  has  also  made  of  one  blood  all  the 
brute  beasts  of  the  world,  and  that  we  owe  duties  to  them. 
No  one  denies  the  humanity  of  the  Bushman,  the  Andaman 
islander,  and  the  Australian  savage,  and  assuredly  they  have 
a  right  not  less  than  that  of  Englishmen  or  Germans  to  be 
treated  as  men  ;  but  the  assertion  of  this  fact  is  not  the 
assertion  that  they  all  descend  from  Adam,  or  rather,  it  should 
be  said,  from  Noah. 

The  superstitions  which  traditionalism  has  raised  on  the 
story  of  the  third  chapter  of  Genesis  are  not  less  ludicrous 
and  painful,  but  immeasurably  more  repulsive,  than  any  others. 
Without  attempting  to  determine  the  meaning  of  the  very 
peculiar  phraseology  of  this  chapter,  the  influences  under 
which  it  must  have  been  written,  and  the  lessons  which  it  is 
intended  to  inforce,  the  readers  of  the  narrative  jump  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  speaks  of  some  ophidian  creature,  or  of  the 
devil  as  disguised  under  its  form.  The  Bishop  cites  at  some 
length  the  remarks  of  the  highly  orthodox  critic  Delitzch  on 
the  subject.  Few  criticisms  could  be  more  contemptible. 
Delitzch  says  that  in  the  Elohistic  story  the  brute  animals 
and  other  creatures  arc  made  before  man,  while  man  in  the 
Jehovistic  tale  is  made  before  the  animals.  To  reconcile  or 
get  rid  of  these  contradictions  he  actually  commits  him- 
to  the  following  astounding  assumptions  :  (i)  "the  Creation 
was  a  struggle  between  the  Divine  Creator  and  the  might  of 
evil";  (2)  the  Evil  one  prevailed  so  far  as  to  "mislead"  the 
VOL.  I.  p  r 


578  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

animals  created  in  the  fifth  day  (i.  21),  and  in  the  sixth  before 
the  creation  of  man  (i.  25)  ;  (3)  hence  all  these  animals  were 
to  be  swept  away  with  the  vegetation  created  on  the  third 
day  (i.  12)  ;  (4)  a  new  creation  of  plants  and  beasts  and  birds 
took  place  on  the  sixth  day  after  the  creation  of  man  ;  (^5) 
the  evil  spirit  tried  to  corrupt  this  last  creation  also,  and 
therefore  "  made  use  of  a  beast "  in  order  to  deceive  the 
woman. 

On  such  principles  of  interpretation  the  Hebrew  Scriptures, 
or  any  other  writings,  may  be  easily  made  to  yield  whateve 
results  we  please  ;  and  there  is  no  answering  for  the  con- 
clusions into  which  the  speculators  may  be  drawn.  Delitzch 
acknowledges  that  the  descriptions  given  of  the  Deity  are 
anthropomorphic  ;  that  he  walks  in  the  shade  in  the  cool  of 
the  day,  and  puts  together  aprons  from  the  skins  of  beasts  ; 
and  that  this  anthropomorphic  intercourse,  which  is  itself  the 
consequence  of  the  Fall,  "  culminates  in  the  Incarnation." 
Having  so  stated,  he  plunges  into  a  weedy  sea.  He  has 
already  treated  brute  animals  as  moral  beings  :  he  now  goes 
on  to  say  that  sin  may  deform  the  body  of  a  brute  beast 
even   though  it  has  been   only  the  instrument  of  a  spirit.^ 

"  The  serpent,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "  was  before  made  other- 
wise ;  now  ....  it  is,  as  it  were,  the  embodiment  of  the 
diabolical  sin  and  the  Divine  curse." 

But  there  is  no  "  as  it  were  "  in  the  matter.  It  either  is  this 
embodiment,  or  it  is  not.  He  has  only  just  before  said  that 
the  serpents  brought  into  existence  before  the  creation  of  man 
were  all  swept  away,  and  another  race  was  formed  after  man 
came  upon  the  scene,  so  that  with  these,  at  all  events,  there 
was  a  second  failure.  But  there  is  absolutely  nothing  more 
than  impudent  assertion  in  the  statement  that  the  serpent 
was  not  made  as  it  is  now.      There  is  no  deformity  whatever 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  140. 


I 


1 863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  579 

in  the  serpent,  and  its  shape  is  as  wonderful  and  beautiful  an 
instance  of  adaptation  of  means  to  ends  as  is  to  be  found  in 
any  created  organism.  But  we  may  multiply  words  to  any 
extent  on  the  habits  or  the  shape  of  serpents,  and  we  shall  be 
as  far  away  as  ever  from  catching  even  a  glimmer  of  meaning 
from  the  narrative  of  Eve's  temptation.  If  the  tale  is  not  genuine 
history,  it  may  be  symbolical  ;  and  if  ever  there  have  been  such 
things  as  symbolical  narratives,  this  surely  is  likely,  or  rather 
certain,  to  be  one  of  them.  We  are  well  enough  aware  that 
there  has  been,  and  that  there  is  still,  tree  and  serpent  worship 
in  the  world  ;  and  they  who  have  bestowed  any  thought  upon 
the  subject,  are  also  well  aware  that  the  tree  so  worshipped  is 
a  stem  or  stock — in  other  words,  it  is  a  symbol  or  sign  ;  that 
the  tree  is  the  serpent  and  the  serpent  is  the  tree  in  different 
aspects  ;  that  the  garden  is  not  only  a  geographical  paradise, 
but  the  garden  of  the  human  body,  the  field  in  which  the 
enemy  sows  tares  ;  and  that  the  tree  is  the  Asherah  or  grove 
for  which  the  Jewish  women  wove  hangings  in  later  genera- 
tions. But  if  these  are  symbols,  then  the  whole  language  of 
this  narrative  is  symbolical.  The  transgression  cannot  be 
committed  by  the  man  or  the  woman  alone,  and  it  is  the 
serpent  which  leads  to  the  Asherah,  the  Phallos,  or  the  Linga. 
It  follows  that  the  biting  of  the  heel  and  the  bruising  of  the 
head  are  also  symbolical  phrases,  which  like  the  nudity  of  the 
serpent  are  somewhat  disguised,  perhaps  not  without  purpose, 
in  the  Septuagint,  the  Latin,  and  the  English  versions  ;  and 
further  that  the  death  which  is  the  consequence  of  the  trans- 
gression is  not  the  physical  change  which  we  denote  by  that 
word.  In  this  instance  Mr.  Maurice's  method  of  dealing  with 
the  Old  Testament  led  him  right.  He  could  not  bring  him- 
self to  believe,  he  could  not  allow  any  others  to  believe,  that 
when  Adam  received  the  warning  of  immediate  death,  the 
sentence  was  not  to  be  executed  for  many  centuries.  The 
writer  was  not  therefore  speaking  of  that  which  is  called  the 

r  P  2 


58o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

death  of  the  body  ;  he  was  speaking  of  the  only  real  death, 
the  death  which  is  the  wages  of  sin,  of  disobedience  and  self- 
will.i 

With  this  story  of  the  temptation  the  Bishop  had  to  deal 
to  show  that,  whatever  it  might  be,  it  was  not  an  historical 
narrative.  It  might  have  been  a  happy  thing  for  the  progress 
of  English  religious  thought  if  he  had  been  led  to  apply  his 
perfectly  straightforward  and  incisive  critical  method  to  the 
symbolism  as  well  as  to  the  history  of  this  passage.  But  the 
subject  is  one  from  which  we  may  be  glad  to  escape,  although 
sooner  or  later  a  thorough  examination  of  it  cannot  be  avoided. 
Dr.  Donaldson  has  thrown  over  it  the  veil  of  what  is  supposed 
to  be  a  learned  language  ;  but  they  who  would  have  the  origin 
and  meaning  of  the  tale  fully  drawn  out  will  find  the  task 
admirably  done  in  the  pages  of  his  JasJiar?-  Seen  in  this  light 
the  narrative  becomes  a  subject  of  supreme  interest.  It  is 
found  to  be  the  expression  of  a  theological  philosophy  which 
has  slowly  taken  a  very  definite  shape.  This  philosophy  has 
its  own  difficulties  ;  and  the  difficulties  of  the  subject  itself 
may  be  insurmountable.  We  have,  however,  nothing  which 
is  either  ridiculous  or  contemptible.  For  utterances  which 
may  excite  a  stronger  feeling  than  that  of  mere  disapproval 
we  have  to  turn  to  the  comments  of  modern  critics.  Thus 
Delitzch  tells  us  that 

"  Man  in  consequence  of  sin  needs  a  covering  to  hide  his 
nakedness.  He  himself  has  made  the  attempt  to  cover  his 
nakedness  by  his  own  contrivance :  however,  he  has  not 
succeeded  ;  before  God  he  cannot  present  himself  with  his 
vileness.  Only  God  prepares  for  him  a  covering  which  may 
serve  for  man  to  appear  in  before  God,  and  that  from  the 
skins  of  slain  animals,  and  therefore  at  the  cost  of  innocent 

1  See  p.  300. 

-  I  may  also  refer  the  reader  to  my  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations, 
Book  II.  chap.  ii.  section  12. 


1 863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  581 

life,  at  the  expense  of  the  shedding  of  innocent  blood.  This 
blood  was  an  image  of  the  blood  of  Christ,  this  clothing  an 
image  of  the  clothing  of  righteousness  in  Christ." 

Talk  such  as  this  may  be  meant  to  be  orthodox  ;  but  it  is 
(whatever  the  motive  of  the  writer  may  be,  and  of  this  we  do 
not  judge)  rank  blasphemy,  and  they  who  love  the  truth  may 
be  grateful  to  those  who  provide  the  antidote.  It  is  not  here 
only  that  the  Bishop  cites  the  words  of  Dr.  Thomas  Burnet, 
long  Master  of  the  Charterhouse.  Of  the  fig-leaf  aprons  Dr. 
Burnet  says : — 

"  Here  we  have  the  first  step  in  the  act  of  sewing,  but  whence 
had  they  a  needle,  whence  a  thread  on  the  first  day  of  their 
creation  ?  These  questions  may  seem  to  be  too  free  ;  but 
the  matter  itself  demands  that  we  act  freely  when  we  are 
seeking  the  naked  truth.  When,  however,  they  had  made 
to  themselves  girdles,  God  gave  them,  besides,  coats  made, 
forsooth,  out  of  the  skins  of  beasts.  But  here  again  we  run 
into  difficulties.  To  soften  the  matter  let  us  substitute  in 
the  place  of  God  an  angel.  An  angel,  then,  slew  and  skinned 
the  animals,  or  stripped  the  skin  from  innocent  or  living 
animals.  But  this  is  the  business  of  a  slaughterer  or  butcher, 
not  an  angel.  Besides,  through  this  slaughter  whole  races 
of  animals  would  have  perished,  for  it  is  not  believed  that 
more  than  two  of  each  kind  were  created  at  first  ;  and  one 
without  the  other  would  have  had  no  offspring."  1 

But  in  truth  it  is  not  a  stray  sentence  here  and  there  in 
the  book  of  Genesis  which  becomes  in  the  hands  of  modern 
commentators  a  fountain  of  perennial  nonsense.  The  old 
Hebrew  book  speaks  throughout  of  men  who  start  with  living 
for  something  like  a  millennium  ;  but  the  span  of  human  life 
has  grown,  and  so  has  the  standard  of  human  size  and  weight. 
It  is  absurd  to  waste  time  on  attempts  to  explain  or  to  recon- 
cile. The  wall  is  plastered  up  in  one  part,  only  to  reveal 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  151. 


582  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

many  more  and  worse  rents  in  another.  The  duration 
assigned  for  human  hves  renders  utterly  uncertain  the  whole 
history,  down  at  least  to  the  establishment  of  the  Jews  in 
Canaan,  even  if  all  other  difficulties  could  be  removed.  In 
fact,  however,  the  Jewish  stories  are  found  for  the  most  part 
everywhere  else,  and  it  is  amusing  to  find  Virgil  fancying  that 
the  process  of  diminution  in  the  human  height  and  bulk  is  to 
go  on,  and  that  the  Pharsalian  ploughman  centuries  hence 
would  be  astonished  at  the  relics  of  men  who  had  fallen  in 
the  ranks  of  Cassius.  The  Great  Pyramid  may  look  like  a 
work  of  giants  ;  but  the  entrance  admits  a  man  with  diffi- 
culty, and  in  the  centre  is,  or  was,  a  sarcophagus  about  six 
feet  long. 

Of  the  Noachian  flood  it  is  useless  to  say  anything  except 
in  reference  to  the  strange  temper  which  delights  to  waste 
time  by  attempts  to  reconcile  plain  contradictions  and  account 
for  sheer  impossibilities.  The  Bishop  has  examined  these 
attempts  1  with  his  usual  patience,  and  shows  that  on  any 
hypothesis  the  whole  story  falls  to  the  ground.  No  command 
is  given  for  the  preservation  of  the  fish  ;  but  the  fresh-water 
fish  must  have  died  as  soon  as  the  salt  water  of  the  sea 
broke  in,  and  the  sea  fish  must  have  likewise  perished  as  soon 
as  from  the  preponderance  of  the  rain  water  the  waters  of  the 
sea  began  to  lose  their  saltness.  The  same  ignorance  of  facts 
is  shown  by  the  incident  of  the  olive-leaf  which  is  brought, 
plucked  apparently  fresh  and  green,  from  a  tree  which  had 
been  immersed  eight  or  nine  months,  under  water  many 
thousands  of  feet  in  depth,  if  it  was  found  by  the  dove  at  the 
greatest  height  ever  reached  by  a  myrtle  plant.  We  may  be 
forgiven  if  we  turn  with  a  feeling  of  loathing  from  the  lucu- 
brations of  Dean  Wilkins,  who  coolly  calculates  the  animal 
food  needed  by  the  beasts  of  prey  at  1825  sheep,  which  are 
accordingly  to  be  stowed  in  the  ark  along  with  the  pair  or 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  chap.  xvii. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  5S3 

pairs  to  be  taken  in  for  the  preservation  of  their  kind.  Others 
in  our  own  day,  who  have  no  difficulty  in  multiplying  marvels 
or  natural  impossibilities,  have  seen  no  reason  why  the  beasts 
of  prey  should  not  have  been  preserved  in  the  ark  in  a  state 
of  torpor  ;  but  neither,  if  this  be  so,  is  there  any  reason  w^hy 
all  other  living  things  should  not  have  been  preserved  in  the 
same  condition,  and  thus  all  trouble  in  gathering  food  have 
been  spared  to  Noah  and  his  children.  If  we  turn  to  the 
chronology,  we  find  that  there  are  forty  days  of  rain  at  the 
beginning,  and  forty  days  during  which  the  ark  rests  after 
grounding  ;  and  this  number  of  forty  meets  us  everywhere — 
in  the  fast  of  Moses,  in  the  searchings  of  the  spies  under 
Joshua  and  Caleb,  in  the  forty  years'  wanderings  in  the 
wilderness,  in  the  reigns  of  David  and  Solomon.  The  figures 
are  not  real  in  any  instance,  and  it  is  but  wasted  toil  to 
prop  up  a  history  w^hich  has  no  foundations.  This  is  the  fate 
of  all  attempts  to  show  that  the  Deluge  was  partial,  not 
universal. 

*'  It  is,"  the  Bishop  says,  "just  as  inconceivable  that  the 
worms  and  snails  and  grasshoppers  should  have  crawled 
into  the  ark  from  different  parts  of  some  large  basin  in 
Western  Asia  as  from  different  parts  of  the  world.  One 
small  brook  alone  w^ould  have  been  a  barrier  to  their  further 
progress."  ^ 

But  the  language  of  the  story  points  unmistakably  to  a 
universal  flood,  in  the  destruction  of  all  flesh  and  every  living 
thing,  in  the  covering  of  all  the  high  hills  under  the  whole 
heaven.  Modern  traditionalists  go  on  to  "  reconcile  "  laws  of 
gravitation  or  any  others  with  this  old  tale,  and  it  is  as  easy 
for  them  to  suppose  that  a  universal  or  partial  deluge  might 
pass  away  leaving  no  signs  of  its  occurrence  behind  it  as  to 
assert  that  the   appearances  of  stratification  in  the  earth  are 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  W .  p.  202. 


584  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

mere  snares  placed  by  God  Himself  to  deceive  geologists. 
But  let  the  Deluge  be  reduced  within  the  smallest  limits,  let 
the  species  taken  in  be  limited  to  twenty  of  clean  animals 
and  sixty  of  unclean,  and  what  is  the  result  .'' 

"  Let  any  person  picture  to  himself  what  would  be  the  con- 
dition of  a  menagerie,  consisting  of  four  hundred  animals, 
confined  in  a  narrow  space  under  these  circumstances  for 
more  than  twelve  months  !  We  must  first  suppose,  of 
course,  that  Noah  and  his  wife  and  children  were  occupied 
every  day,  and  all  day  long,  incessantly,  in  taking  to  these 
four  hundred  creatures,  two  or  three  times  a  day,  their 
necessary  supplies  of  dry  food  and  water,  bringing  fresh  litter 
and  cleansing  away  the  old.  But  shut  up  together  closely  in 
this  way,  with  scarcely  any  light  and  air,  is  it  not  plain  that 
in  a  very  short  time  every  part  of  the  ship  must  have  been 
full  of  filth  and  corruptive  matter,  fever,  and  pestilence  1 
But  the  ship  may  have  been  kept  clean,  and  the  air  pure, 
and  the  animals  healthy,  though  shut  up  without  light  and 
air,  by  a  miracle  !  Yes,  certainly,  by  multiplying  miracles 
ad  infinitum,  of  which  the  Bible  gives  not  the  slightest 
intimation — which,  rather,  the  whole  tenor  of  the  story  as 
plainly  as  possible  excludes — if  this  is  thought  to  be  a 
reverent  mode  of  dealing  with  Scripture,  or  at  all  more 
reverent  than  a  course  of  criticism  of  the  kind  which  I  am 
now  pursuing,  while  thus  endeavouring  to  set  the  plain 
facts  of  the  case  in  a  clear  strong  light  before  the  eyes 
of  the  reader."  ^ 

The  modern  traditionalist  deserves  no  indulgence.  For  the 
old  Hebrew  writer  it  should  in  all  justice  be  remembered  that 
he  was  innocent  of  all  conscious  offence  against  truths  or 
facts  of  science  ;  that  he  lived  in  a  world  of  which  he  knew 
nothing  ;  and  that  he  fancied  it  to  be  a  flat  surface  of  no  very 
great  extent,  round,  square,  or  oblong.  But  the  story  of  the 
Flood,  like  that  of  the  Creation,  is  found  in  many  lands,  in 

^  Pentateuch^  Part  IV.  p.  207. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  585 


some  points  resembling,  in  others  wholly  unlike,  the  Noachian 
narrative.  The  dove  and  raven  incident  is  found  in  the 
legends  of  the  Mexicans  and  the  islanders  of  Cuba  ;  and 
Delitzch  seizes  on  this  circumstance  as  showing  that  these 
legends  are  all  most  probably  derived  from  one  primaeval 
historical  fact.     The  inference,  the  Bishop  adds, 

"  would  be  justified,  if  the  other  chief  details  of  the  story  were 
found  repeated  in  the  legends  ;  otherwise  it  might  be  just  as 
fairly  argued  that  the  primaeval  fact  involved  also  the 
changing  stones  into  men,  which  appears  so  prominent  in 
these  South  American  legends  as  well  as  in  that  of  the 
Greeks."  ^ 

But,  leaving  the  subject  of  the  Flood  and  all  that  relates  to 
it,  leaving  also  the  lists  of  tribes  and  nations  which  give  the 
ancient  notions  of  ethnology,  we  come  to  a  point  of  greater 
importance  in  the  Hebrew  language.  The  Pentateuch  is 
written  throughout  in  pure  Hebrew.  When  then  was  it 
written }  and  could  it  possibly  have  been  written  in  this 
dialect  before,  at,  or  soon  after  the  time  of  the  Exodus  } 
What,  in  short,  was  the  Hebrew  language  }  It  was  not  allied 
to  the  Egyptian,  for  Joseph's  brethren  when  they  stood 
before  the  supposed  Egyptian  ruler,  address  him  through  an 
interpreter ;  but 

"  we  find  Abraham  conversing  freely  with  the  Canaanite 
King  of  Sodom,  and  with  Melchizedek,  the  Jebusite  King 
of  Salem."  2 

So  Rahab,  in  Jericho,  is  represented  as  talking  freely  with  the 
Hebrew  spies,  and  the  Hivites  of  Gibeon  with  Joshua.  Could 
this  language,  then,  have  been  the  speech  of  men  who  had 
been  for  many  generations  exiles  in  Egypt  .^  It  certainly  had 
not  been  the  language  of  Abraham  when  he  came  out  from 
Aram  ;  nor  was  it  the  language  of  Laban,  who  gives  an 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  218.  -  lb.  p.  247. 


586  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

Aramaic  name  to  the  stone  set  up  by  himself  and  Jacob,  while 
Jacob  gives  to  the  same  stone  a  Hebrew  name  of  like  signifi- 
cation. But  this  shows  that  in  Abraham's  new  home  Hebrew 
had  become  the  mother  tongue  of  his  children  and  descendants, 
that  Jacob  had  retained  it  during  his  sojourn  with  Laban,  and 
used  it  again  on  his  return  to  Canaan.  But  here  difficulties 
come  thick  and  fast.  His  wives,  and  all  the  servants,  male 
and  female,  which  he  brought  with  him,  must  all  have  been 
Aramaeans,  and  therefore  must  have  spoken  the  Syrian  or 
Aramaean  tongue  ;  and  the  young  children,  the  eldest  not 
then  above  twelve,  must  have  spoken  Aramaic  also.  Thirty 
years  later  they  are  settled  in  Goshen.  In  this  short  time, 
then,  they  must  have  changed  their  language  altogether,  and 
the  Hebrew  tongue  must  have  taken  upon  them  a  hold  so 
marvellous  that,  going  down  into  Egypt,  and  living  there 
under  the  circumstances  described  in  the  Book  of  Exodus, 
they  maintained  this  dialect  for  two  centuries  at  least  in 
perfect  purity  ;  inasmuch  as  the  books  which  are  said  to  have 
been  written  before,  or  soon  after,  this  time,  exhibit  no  inter- 
mixture of  any  foreign  element.  Indeed,  if  we  allow  that  the 
seventy  souls  who  went  down  with  Jacob  into  Egypt  spoke 
Hebrew,  we  can  scarcely  suppose  that  they  spoke  pure 
Hebrew.  Yet  the  story  of  the  Exodus,  which  is  asserted  to 
be  a  contemporary  narrative,  is  written  in  the  purest  Hebrew  ; 
and  this  purity  has  been  maintained  through  a  long  period 
of  exile,  in  which  they  would  be  peculiarly  exposed  to  the 
influence  of  Egyptian  speech,  and  afterwards  through  a  long 
period  of  servitude. 

"  It  may,  perhaps,"  the  Bishop  remarks,  "  be  alleged  that  the 
language  of  the  Pentateuch  is  sufficiently  explained,  if 
Moses  spoke  and  wrote  Hebrew  perfectly.  Yet,  how  should 
Moses — who  for  the  first  forty  years  of  his  life  was  brought 
up  in  Pharaoh's  house,  in  all  the  learning  of  the  Egyptians 
— who  may  of  course  have  spoken  Hebrew  as  well  as  Egyp- 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  587 


tian,  but  could  only  have  learnt  it  from  the  speech  of  his 
fellow-countrymen  when  they  had  already  been  living  in 
Egypt  under  the  circumstances  above  described  for  130 
years  to  the  day  of  his  birth — and  who  spent  the  next 
forty  years  of  his  life  in  the  deserts  of  Midian — have  main- 
tained all  along  the  perfect  Hebrew  tongue,  pure  and 
simple,  without  the  slightest  adulteration  from  any  foreign 
influences,  neither  vocabulary  nor  syntax  being  in  the  least 
degree  modified  ?  "  ^ 

That   they   should    have    maintained    a   speech   learnt   in 
Canaan  only  during  thirty  {Pentateuch  thirty-two)  years, 

"amidst  the  joys  of  their  prosperous  and  the  oppressions  of 
their  miserable  days  in  Egypt,  without  adopting  a  single 
idiom  or  a  single  term,  even  the  name  of  a  common  article 
of  food  or  dress,  tool,  implement,  &c.,  from  the  Egyptians," 

must  seem  fairly  incredible.  But  the  special  miracles  invoked 
by  the  defenders  of  the  Noachian  flood  story  may  be 
introduced  here  also.  Nothing  is  said  or  hinted  about  any 
such  miracle  ;  but,  if  it  was  wrought,  for  what  end,  the  Bishop 
asks,  was  it  wrought  .■' 

"  To  maintain  in  its  purity  among  the  Hebrews  the  language, 
not  of  the  primitive  home  of  the  Hebrew  race,  but  of  the 
idolatrous  tribes  of  Canaan,"  ^ 

whom  it  is  said  they  were  solemnly  commissioned  to  extirpate. 
The  Bishop  notes  this  fact  as  a  strong  confirmation — many 
no  doubt  will  regard  it  as  most  cogent  proof — of  the  con- 
clusion that  the  Pentateuch  was  written 

'•  not  at  a  time  when  the  tribes  were  just  fresh  from  their  long 
Egyptian  sojourn,  but  at  a  much  later  period  of  their 
national  history,  when  the  language  of  Canaan  had  become 
after  several  generations  the  common  tongue  of  the  invading 
Hebrew,  as  well  as  of  the  heathen  tribes  whom  they  deprived 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  261.  ^  lb.  p.  262. 


588  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

of  their  possessions  in  Canaan,  and  whom  they  were  un- 
wiUing  to  acknowledge  as  brethren,  although  it  is  plain 
the  language  of  the  Canaanites  belongs  to  the  same  group 
as  that  spoken  by  the  collateral  branch  of  the  Hebrew 
family  in  the  '  city  of  Nahor.'  " 

Philological  facts,  like  most  others,  are  stubborn  things. 
The  evidence  of  artificial  chronology  is  not  less  conclusive. 
The  Book  of  Genesis  professes  to  give  the  life-time  of  the 
so-called  Patriarchs.     According  to  the  details  thus  furnished, 

"  Noah,  Shem,  Arphaxad,  &c.,  in  fact  all  of  Abraham's 
progenitors,  were  living  during  many  years  of  Abraham's 
life,  and  Shem,  Saleh,  and  Eber  outlived  him.  Shem, 
Arphaxad,  Saleh,  Eber,  Serug,  Terah,  were  living  at  the 
birth  of  Isaac  ;  and  Shem  and  Eber  lived,  the  one  during 
fifty,  the  other  during  nearly  eighty,  years  of  the  life  of 
Jacob.  Yet  we  do  not  find  the  slightest  intimation  that 
Abraham,  Isaac,  or  Jacob  paid  any  kind  of  reverence  or 
attention  to  any  of  their  ancestors,  more  especially  to  their 
great  ancestor  Shem,  who  had  gone  through  that  wonderful 
event  of  the  Deluge  (except  indeed  on  the  strange  sup- 
position that  Melchizedek  was  Shem),  or  that  Abraham 
ever  paid  a  visit  to  Noah,  who,  however,  is  supposed  by 
some  (without  the  slightest  warrant  from  Scripture)  to  have 
colonised  the  extreme  East,  China,  &c.,  and  so  to  have  gone 
out  of  his  reach."  ^ 

More  than   this,  while  the  Patriarchs  of  the  Deluge  still 

live,  the   kingdoms  of  Assyria  and  Egypt  have  risen  to  be 

large,  powerful,  and   populous.     In   fact,  this  chronology  was 

set  down  (we  can  scarcely  say  that  it  was  put  together)  simply 

by  way  of  magnifying   the    ancestors    of  the    Hebrews.     It 

shows  no  method  and  no  skill,  and  thus  stands  out  in  marked 

contrast  with   the  very  skilfully   framed  chronology  of  the 

early  Roman  kings.- 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  282. 

-  Lewis,  Credibility  of  Early  Rovian  History,  vol.  i.  p.  528. 


I 


1 863-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  COMPOSITION.  589 

On  the  supposition  that  we  have  in  the  Pentateuch  a 
really  contemporaneous  history,  the  treatment  of  these  five 
books  in  the  later  Hebrew  literature  becomes  astonishing 
indeed.  The  primaeval  history  of  the  Book  of  Genesis,  on 
which  according  to  modern  traditionalism  the  whole  of  the 
so-called  "  scheme  "  of  Christianity  is  made  to  depend,  seems 
to  have  passed  clean  away  from  the  memory  of  the  Hebrews. 
Of  the  first  man  and  of  his  fall,  of  the  garden,  of  the  forbidden 
fruit,  of  the  expulsion  from  Paradise,  and  of  the  Deluge,  we 
never  hear  again. 

"  One  single  certain  trace  of  the  story  of  Adam's  fall  is," 
in  Langkerke's  words,  "entirely  wanting  in  the  Hebrew 
canon.  Adam,  Eve,  the  serpent,  the  woman's  seduction 
of  her  husband,  are  all  images,  to  which  the  remaining 
words  of  the  Israelites  never  again  recur." 

"  At  all  events,"  the  Bishop  adds,  "  there  is  not  the  slightest 
indication  that  in  the  teaching  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  the 
account  of  the  Fall  was  quoted  and  dwelt  upon.  .  .  ,  And, 
as  to  Noah,  his  name  is  never  once  mentioned,  nor  is  any 
reference  made  to  the  Deluge  by  any  one  of  the  psalmists 
and  prophets,  except  in  the  latter  part  of  the  Book  of 
Isaiah,  and  in  Ezekiel,  by  writers  undoubtedly  living  after 
the  Captivity."  ^ 

It  is  not  here  only  that  we  have  this  same  phenomenon  of 
a  general  belief  or  dogma  resting  on  no  foundation.  The 
Pentateuch  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  written  Bible  of  the 
Jews  from  the  time  of  the  invasion  of  Canaan,  familiarly  known 
to  the  people,  and  beyond  all  things  precious  to  their  teachers 
and  rulers  ;  and  we  have  seen  that  the  former  were  wholly 
unacquainted  with  it,  and  that  the  discovery  of  the  Book  of 
the  Law  filled  Josiah  with  humiliation  and  shame.  So  we 
have  grown  up  with  the  idea  that  the  poems  to  which  we  give 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  286. 


590  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

the  name  of  Homer  existed  in  their  present  form  from  pre- 
historic ages,  and  that  our  Iliad  and  Odyssey  were,  in  short, 
the  Bible  of  the  Greeks.  According  to  Colonel  Mure,  they 
were  the  acknowledged  standard  or  digest  of  early  national 
history,  geography,  and  mythology.  In  the  judgement  of 
Baron  Bunsen  they  formed  "  the  canon  regulating  the  Hellenic 
mental  developement  in  all  things  spiritual,  in  faith  and  rea- 
son, worship  and  religion,  civil  and  domestic  life,  poetry,  art, 
science."  The  claim  advanced  for  Homer  here  is  the  same 
precisely  with  the  claim  urged  for  the  Pentateuch  ;  and  for  it 
there  is  no  more  warrant  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other. 
Writers  before  the  age  of  Perikles  refer  to  a  poet  whom  they 
call  Homer,  but  the  poems  of  which  they  speak  are  not  our 
Iliad  and  Odyssey.  Of  these  the  Greek  lyric  and  tragic  poets 
know  nothing.  The  versions  which  they  give  of  the  ancient 
mythical  history  are  altogether  different  from  those  of  the 
poems  to  which  we  give  the  name  "  Homeric."  Only  in  the 
rarest  instances  do  the  Greek  dramatists  take  their  subjects 
from  episodes  included  in  our  Iliad  and  Odyssey ;  and  with 
the  pictures  of  personal  character  there  given  their  own  are 
quite  inconsistent.  This  fact  could  not  escape  the  notice 
even  of  Homeric  traditionalists  ;  and  to  account  for  it  they 
have  resorted  to  assumptions  substantially  identical  with 
those  of  the  self-styled  orthodox  Biblical  commentators.  The 
Greek  Bible  was  too  sacred  a  thing  to  be  wantonly  touched  ; 
and  the  Greek  lyric  and  tragic  poets  refused  from  a  mere 
feeling  of  reverence  to  draw  their  inspiration  from  the 
"  acknowledged  standard  or  digest  of  early  national  history, 
geography,  and  mythology."  This  is  a  complete  contradic- 
tion and  a  not  less  complete  delusion  ;  but  the  method  followed 
by  those  who  seek  to  maintain  it  is  as  little  creditable  as  that 
of  Dr.  McCaul,  or  of  Kurtz,  or  of  Delitzch.^ 

1  I  may  refer  the  reader  who  wishes  to  see  the  evidence  for  these  conclu- 
sions to  my  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations,  Book  I.  chap.  ix.  ed.  1878. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  COMPOSITION.  591 

In  neither  case  however  is  there  any  difficulty,  if  we  will  but 
look  facts  steadily  in  the  face.  Thucydides  quotes  from 
*'  Homer,"  but  he  cites  passages  found  in  poems  which  are  not 
now  commonly  called  Homeric.  It  could  not  be  otherwise, 
as  our  Iliad  and  Odyssey  assumed  their  present  form  after  his 
time.  So  with  the  evidence  before  us  on  the  composition  of 
the  Pentateuch,  it  is 

"  impossible  to  believe  that  the  devout  prophets,  priests,  and 
kings,  and  pious  people  all  along,  were  thoroughly  con- 
versant with  the  written  Law,  were  deep  in  the  study  of  it, 
and  practising  its  precepts  daily,  were  reminded  annually  of 
its  existence  by  the  sacred  ordinances,  which  the  more 
religious  minds  among  them  faithfully  observed,  and  were 
also  summoned  once  in  seven  years  to  hear  the  whole  Law 
read  at  the  feast  of  Tabernacles." 

But  the  fact  of  their  ignorance  is  at  once  accounted  for  when 
we  remember  that  the  story  of  the  Fall  was  written  not  earlier 
than  the  latter  part  of  David's  reign, 

"  and  was  known  to  them  as  only  a  narrative,  written  for  the 
edification  of  the  people,  by  some  distinguished  man  of  that 
age.  Probably  one  or  two  copies  may  have  been  made  of 
it,  or  perhaps  only  one,  which  remained  in  the  charge 
of  the  priests,  and  may  have  been  added  to  from  time 
to  time."  ^ 

But  a  great  fascination  leads  some  men  to  kick  against  the 
pricks.  The  Pentateuch  came  in  a  late  age  to  be  regarded 
as  the  work  of  Moses  :  therefore  it  was  his  work.  Moses,  so 
Mr.  Kingsley  would  have  it,  was 

"  far  the  most  likely  man  to  have  written  them  of  all  of  whom 
we  read  in  Scripture  "  ;  and  "  if  Moses  did  not  write  the 
Pentateuch,  who  did  t  "  - 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  291.         ^  lb.  p.  294.     See  also  above,  p.  450. 


592  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

The  authority  which  came  to  be  ascribed  to  the  so-called 
Mosaic  books  has  nothing  to  do  with  this  question.  The 
book  of  Enoch  was  composed,  according  to  Archbishop 
Laurence,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  century  immediately 
preceding  our  own  era.  But  this  book,  even  in  so  late  an 
age,  could 

"  acquire  among  the  Jews  in  a  very  short  time — within  perhaps 
fifty,  or  at  most  a  hundred  and  eighty  years — the  reputa- 
tion of  a  veritable  authentic  document,  really  emanating 
from  the  antediluvian  patriarch,  and  either  written  originally 
by  his  own  hand,  or  at  least  handed  down  by  tradition  from 
those  who  lived  before  the  Deluge." 

This  is  a  matter  really  of  vast  importance  for  those  who 
adhere  to  the  position  taken  by  Bishop  Gray  and  his  sup- 
porters. The  judge  and  his  assessors,  with  the  accusing 
clergy  at  the  so-called  Capetown  trial,  all  spoke  in  vehement 
indignation  against  the  reckless  criticism — or,  rather,  profanity 
— which  dared  to  question  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch, when  this  authorship  was  vouched  for  and  guaranteed 
by  Christ  Himself  To  doubt  this  was  to  impute  deliberate 
falsehood  to  the  eternal  Son  of  God.  The  references  to  Moses 
in  the  New  Testament  settled  the  question  of  the  genuineness 
and  authenticity,  as  well  as  the  canonicity,  of  the  Pentateuch. 
But  the  Epistle  of  St.  Jude  distinctly  quotes  a  passage  from 
the  book  of  Enoch  as  a  prophecy  of  "  Enoch  the  seventh  from 
Adam "  ;  ^  and  St.  Jude  was,  of  course,  in  Bishop  Gray's 
belief  an  inspired  Apostle.  The  book  of  Enoch  is  therefore 
both  genuine  and  authentic  ;  and  being  thus  apostolically 
attested,  it  ought  to  be  included  in  the  Canon  of  Scripture. 
Unfortunately  it  is  not ;  and  Bishop  Gray  is  therefore  at 
variance  with  those  by  whom  the   Canon  was  determined. 

Pentateuch,  Part  W,  p.  311. 


1863.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  COMPOSITION.  593 

This  is  the  conclusion  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  Epistle  of 
St.  Jude  itself  is  genuine.     Otherwise 

"  It  would  follow  that  a  book  (that  ascribed  to  St.  Jude) 
received  in  the  Church  as  canonical,  could  be  regarded 
also  as  apostolical,  under  a  mistaken  opinion  as  to  its 
authorship,  and  therefore  that  the  fact  of  other  books  (as 
the  books  of  the  Pentateuch)  having  been  received  as 
canonical  and  ascribed  to  a  certain  author  (as  Moses) 
is  no  guarantee  of  their  having  been  really  written  by 
him." 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  the  Second  Epistle 
bearing  the  name  of  St.  Peter  '  must  follow  the  fortunes  of  the 
Epistle  of  St.  Jude.  Both  the  Epistles  contain  a  considerable 
amount  of  matter,  of  a  most  peculiar  kind,  which  is  verbatim^ 
or  as  nearly  as  may  be  verbatim,  the  same.  But  the  influence 
of  the  book  of  Enoch  is  not  limited  to  these  two  Epistles. 

"  In  the  language  attributed  to  our  Lord  Himself,  in  that  of 
St.  Paul,  especially  in  his  early  Epistles,  .  .  .  we  can  dis- 
tinctly trace  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  it  and  recognise 
its  forms  of  expression.  But,  above  all,  this  is  true  of  St. 
John  in  the  Revelation,  where,  it  is  plain,  very  much  of 
the  imagery  has  been  distinctly  adopted  from  that  of  the 
book  of  Enoch."  ^ 

Nay  (and  this  fact  is  of  the  greatest  moment), 

"  almost  all  the  language  of  the  New  Testament  in  which  the 
judgement  of  the  last  day  is  described, — the  eschatology, 
as  it  is  called,  of  the  New  Testament, — appears  to  have 
been  directly  derived  from  the  language  of  the  book  of 
Enoch.  The  '  everlasting  chains '  in  which  the  fallen 
angels  are  '  kept  under  darkness, — the  'everlasting  fire  pre- 
pared for  the  devil  and  his  angels,' — the  '  Son  of  man 
sitting   on    the    throne   of    His    glory,'    choosing    for    the 

1  See  p.  288.  2  Pentateuch,  Part  IV,  p.  323. 

VOL.  I.  00 


594  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xi. 

righteous  their  '  countless  habitations,'  and  destroying  the 
wicked  with  the  word  of  His  mouth, — the  'Book  of  Life' 
opened  before  the  Judge, — earth,  hell,  and  the  grave  '  giving 
up  their  dead,' — the  joy  of  the  righteous,  the  shame  and 
confusion  of  the  wicked,  who  are  led  off  by  the  angels  to 
punishment, — the  '  new  heaven '  and  the  '  new  earth,'  old 
things  having  passed  away, — the  '  furnace  of  fire '  and  the 
lake  of  fire,' — all  these  appear  in  the  book  of  Enoch  ;  and 
the  last,  the  '  lake  of  fire,'  is  manifestly  a  figure  introduced 
with  distinct  reference  to  the  Dead  Sea  ;  and  accordingly, 
in  the  same  connexion,  we  find  the  angels  which  kept  not 
their  first  estate  coupled  with  '  Sodom  and  Gomorrha  and 
the  cities  about  them.'  Nay,  those  awful  words  spoken  of 
Judas,  '  It  were  good  for  that  man  if  he  had  never  been 
born,'  find  their  counterpart  also  in  the  language  of  this 
book."  ^ 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  IV.  p.  326. 


1 


CHAPTER   XII. 

THE   PENTATEUCH  :   ITS   GROWTH. 

So  far  as  the  work  of  proving  the  composite  and  non- 
historical  character  of  the  early  Hebrew  records  is  concerned, 
the  Bishop's  task  had  been  substantially  brought  to  an  end.  But 
other  points  remained  which  a  truth-loving  critic  could  not 
allow  himself  to  neglect.  If  several  writers  have  had  a  hand 
in  shaping  the  Book  of  Genesis,  the  signs  of  the  Deuteronomist 
are  also  stamped  on  the  Book  of  Joshua  ;  and  therefore  the 
Deuteronomist  must  have  lived  after  the  days  of  Moses.^ 
Words  and  expressions  of  a  most  marked  and  striking  kind 
occur  in  the  Book  of  Joshua  and  in  Deuteronomy,  and  no- 
where else  in  the  Pentateuch."  But  these  formulae  occur  only 
in  certain  portions  of  the  former  book,  and  in  the  other  parts 
we  have  the  peculiar  phrases  of  the  older  writers  of  the 
Pentateuch,  which  are  nev'er  used  by  the  Deuteronomist.^  In 
the  original  narrative  of  Joshua  there  is  a  good  deal  of  matter 
interpolated  by  the  Deuteronomist,  and  some  also  by  other 
writers.  It  is  impossible  to  reproduce  here  the  tables  in  which 
the  Bishop  has  disentangled  the  conglomerate  mass  of  the 
Pentateuch.  What  has  been  said  already  can  scarcely  fail  to 
give  a  sufficient  idea  of  the  irresistible  cumulative  force  of  his 
whole  analysis  and  argument  ;  and  it  is  therefore  unnecessary, 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  V  .p.  4.  "-lb.  pp.  4,  5.  ^  /^  p  5^ 

^  Q  2 


596  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

even  if  it  were  practicable,  to  go  into  the  minuter  details  of 
the  investigation. 

The  results  are  very  remarkable.  More  than  a  hundred 
different  formulae,  each  occurring  on  an  average  more  than 
ten  times  in  Genesis,  are  found  only  in  those  portions  of  it 
which  remain  after  the  removal  of  the  Elohistic  passages, 
while  with  a  curious  accuracy  these  very  formulae  pass  by  all 
the  sections  belonging  to  the  Elohist  ;  and  these  in  their  turn 
exhibit  also  their  own  peculiar  phraseology,  which  we  never 
find  repeated  in  the  rest  of  Genesis.^  There  is,  further,  a 
wide  moral  difference  between  the  several  writers.  With  a 
deep  sense  of  sin  and  of  its  fatal  consequences,  the  Elohist 
speaks  of  a  renewed  blessing  on  the  earth,  and  knows  nothing 
of  any  woe  inflicted  permanently  on  either  man  or  woman. 
The  Jehovist  multiplies  curses  and  speaks  of  the  sweat  of 
the  brow,  the  very  privilege  and  pledge  of  human  health  and 
happiness,  as  a  sign  of  man's  guilt  and  shame.^  We  are  not 
surprised  therefore,  to  find  that  those  stories  of  impurity 
which  blot  so  many  of  the  chapters  of  Genesis  are  all  due  to 
the  hand  of  the  Jehovist.  But  from  the  Jehovist  comes  the 
story  of  Joseph  ;  and  the  story  of  Joseph  has  been  lauded  by 
Mr.  Maurice  as  a  fountain  of  the  highest  spiritual  instruction, 
while  Joseph  himself  is  for  him  all  but  the  highest  embodiment 
of  unselfish  love.  Yet  it  is  hard  to  see  this,  the  Bishop  remarks, 
in  those  parts  of  it  which  represent  him  as  having  lived  for  the 
seven  fruitful  years  in  possession  of  all  the  power  of  Egypt, 
yet  never  having  sent  during  that  time  a  single  messenger  into 
Canaan  to  comfort  his  father's  heart  with  the  tidings  of  his 
own  existence,  or  to  learn  whether  his  father  still  lived,  and 
how  he  and  his  brother  Benjamin  fared.^ 

"  It  is  just  as  difficult,"  the   Bishop  adds,  "  to  explain  con- 
sistently the  fact  that,  when  Joseph  knew  by  his  brothers' 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  33.  -  lb.  p.  39.  "^  Ib.^.  \\. 


1865.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  597 

report  that  his  father  still  lived,  he,  such  a  dutiful  and  loving 
son,  allowed  his  old  father  to  remain  for  twelve  months 
longer  in  entire  ignorance  of  his  own  fate,  and  made  nc 
provision  whatever  to  supply  him  or  his  family  with  food 
during  all  that  time  amidst  the  straits  of  that  terrible 
famine,  except  by  sending  them,  free  of  expense,  as  much 
corn  as  the  ten  asses  could  carry.  It  is  still  more  impos- 
sible to  believe  that  such  a  tender-hearted  son  and  brother 
could  have  left  it  to  the  mere  chance  of  his  brothers'  coming 
again  in  the  following  year,  whether  he  should  ever  hear  of 
his  brother  Benjamin  again,  or,  when  they  did  come  again, 
could  have  made  the  attempt,  by  lying  himself  and  teaching 
his  steward  to  lie,  to  steal  Benjamin  from  his  father,  as  he 
himself  had  been  stolen,  and  to  send  his  brothers  back  to 
Canaan  to  carry  to  the  aged  Patriarch  the  heart-breaking 
tidings  that  his  darling  son  was  seized  by  the  Governor  of 
Egypt  and  condemned  to  be  treated  as  a  slave  for  theft."  ^ 

What  the  Bishop  says  is,  indeed,  all  true  ;  but  we  can 
scarcely  blame  the  Jehovistic  writer  for  not  having  perceived 
it,  when  the  eyes  of  critics  thousands  of  years  later  are  closed 
to  the  real  character  of  the  tale.  When  he  came  to  the  story 
of  Joseph,  he  came  within  the  charmed  region  of  mythical 
narrative.  He  found  here  certain  materials  ready  to  hand, 
which  the  laws  of  mythical  history  would  not  suffer  him  to  set 
aside.  The  youngest  and  the  darling  son,  the  child  of  the  wife 
who  was  the  heart's  love  of  his  father,  Joseph  is,  like  David  in 
his  youth,  unheeded,  despised,  or  hated,  by  the  crowd  of  his 
elder  brethren  ;  but,  like  David,  he  is  the  man  born  to  be 
prince  or  king.  His  coat  of  many  colours,  his  visions  of  future 
greatness,  his  temptations,  the  seducements  of  the  maiden  to 
whom  tradition  gave  the  name  Zuleika,  the  selling  into  slavery, 
the  false  tidings  of  his  death,  his  wisdom  and  sagacity,  his 
exaltation, — are  all  features  which  appear  in  a  hundred  popular 
tales  of  all  lands,  of  which  the  most  familiar  type  is  the  youth 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  42. 


598  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

who  sits  among  the  ashes,  destined  in  the  issue  to  dazzle  all 
men  with  his  wisdom,  his  benignity,  and  his  splendour.  Seem- 
ingly weak  and  often  despised,  he  has  keener  wit  and  more 
resolute  will  than  all  who  are  opposed  to  him.  Slander  and 
obloquy  are  to  him  as  nothing,  for  he  knows  that  in  the  end 
his  truth  shall  be  made  clear  in  the  sight  of  all  men.  His 
brethren's  sheaves  shall  be  made  to  bow  down  before  his  own  ; 
the  sun,  moon,  and  the  eleven  stars  shall  be  brought  to  do  him 
honour.  This  could  not  be,  if  he  should  be  made  known  to 
his  kindred  before  the  great  manifestation.  He  is  the  revealer 
of  secrets  ;  but  his  main  function  is  to  provide  food  from  the 
earth,  to  nourish,  and  to  sustain.  This  is  his  mission  from 
his  birth.  He  is  Joseph,  the  "  multiplier,"  and  his  life-work  is 
to  give  fertility  to  a  dry  and  thirsty  land.  This  is  the 
character  assigned  to  him  from  the  first  in  the  blessing  of  the 
heaven  above,  the  blessing  of  the  flood  that  lies  below,  the 
blessing  of  the  breasts  and  of  the  womb.^ 

In  the  Joseph  story  there  is,  then,  the  difficulty  arising  from 
the  laws  of  mythical  narrative,  to  which  the  tale-teller  finds 
himself  compelled  to  adhere  ;  but  in  most  of  the  other  narra- 
tives in  the  Book  of  Genesis  there  is  the  further  difficulty 
which  arises  from  two  or  more  sets  of  interpolations  by  later 
writers. 

"  We  often  hear,  for  instance,"  the  Bishop  says,  "  the  character 
of  Abraham  set  forth  as  a  model  of  excellence  for  the 
imitation  of  all  ages.  But  ti'Iiat  Abraham  ?  WJiicJi  of  the 
Abrahams  whose  doings  are  mixed  up  in  such  utter  con- 
fusion by  the  dififerent  writers  concerned  in  the  composition 
of  the  story  in  Genesis?  How  perplexing  it  is  to  find  in 
the  account  of  the  father  of  the  faithful  the  record  of  conduct 
so  mean  and  unworthy  as  that  narrated  in  xii.  1 1-20,  and 
then  to  find,  after  an  interval  of  twenty  years,  the  very  same 
base  act  repeated  by  him.  .  .  .  But  all  this  confusion  and 

^  Goldziher,  Mythology  of  the  Hebrews,  p.  166. 


1865.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  599 

contradiction  is  explained,  when  we  consider  that  the  story 
of  Abraham,  as  we  now  read  it  in  the  Bible,  is  not  a  simple 
story  by  one  single  writer,  but  the  composite  work  of  two 
or  three,  or  it  may  be  ....  of  even  four  or  five  minds, 
writing  each  from  his  own  point  of  view  in  very  different 
ages.  The  original  Elohistic  story,  in  its  grand  simplicity, 
represents  the  Patriarch  ....  without  any  flaw.  He 
migrates  of  his  own  accord,  ....  carrying  out  merely  the 
purpose  of  his  father  ;  ....  he  dwells  in  the  land  of  Canaan, 
and  there  appears  as  the  highly  honoured  servant  of  Elohim  ; 
....  he  receives  the  promised  son,  and  circumcises  him. 
His  wife  dies,  and,  with  inimitable  courtesy,  he  makes  the 
purchase  from  the  sons  of  Heth  of  the  burying-place  in  the 
field  of  Machpelah  ;  and  then  he  dies  and  is  buried  by  his 
two  sons.  .  .  .  And  this  is  all  the  genuine  original  story  of 
Abraham.  This  is  the  real  Abraham  of  the  Bible,  the 
Abraham  of  the  Elohist.  .  .  .  Abraham  receives  no  promise 
for  his  seed  of  all  the  land.  But  then,  on  the  other  hand, 
his  character  is  not  lowered  by  having  ascribed  to  him  the 
miserable  subterfuge  in  the  case  of  Pharaoh,  or  the  still 
more  reprehensible  repetition  of  this  fault  in  the  case  of 
Abimelech.  All  the  additions  which  are  made  by  the 
writers  to  the  original  story  are  mere  refractions  and  dis- 
tortions of  the  character  of  Abraham  as  viewed  through 
their  own  atmospheres."  ^ 

But  although  there  is  abundant  and  irresistible  evidence  of 
the  fact  that  the  Book  of  Genesis  is  a  composite  structure,  there 
is  none  for  the  notion  that  the  several  authors  whose  hands  may 
be  traced  in  it  were  independent  original  writers.  The  matter 
which  they  added  was  in  each  case  merely  supplementary  to 
the  Elohistic  story."  But  when  was  this  Elohistic  story  put 
together  .''  Certainly  not  by  a  writer  older  than  Moses,  for  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis  is  beyond  doubt  the  work  of  the  same 
writer  who  records  the  revelation   of  the  name  Jehovah  to 

'  Pentaieitch,  Part  V.  p.  44.  -  lb,  p.  67. 


6oo  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

Moses  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Exodus.  If  the  latter  narrative 
had  been  written  by  Moses  himself, 

"  it  is  impossible,"  the  Bishop  remarks,  "  to  believe  that  any 
other  writers  would  have  dared  to  obscure  that  fact,  much 
less  to  contradict  it  by  inserting  narratives  in  which  the 
name  is  put  into  the  mouths  of  all  the  chief  persons  in  the 
history,  from  Eve  downwards,  and  by  observing" 

that  men  began  to  call  on  the  name  of  Jehovah  in  the  days  of 
Seth.^  It  follows  that,  if  the  Elohist  was  not  (as  he  cannot 
have  been)  Moses  himself,  he  must  have  lived  later  than 
Moses.  Still  the  style  of  the  narrative  shows  the  simplicity 
of  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  He  nowhere  speaks  of  houses, 
or  of  a  priesthood,  of  a  tabernacle  or  temple,  or  of  regular 
sacrifices.  He  mentions  the  precious  metals  only  once,  when 
Abraham  weighs  out  the  silver  for  the  Hittite  Ephron.-  In 
his  day  Ephraim  was  the  dominant  tribe,  and  its  power  was 
steadily  growing.  We  are  brought  thus  very  nearly  within 
the  limits  of  Samuel's  life-time  ;  and  to  him  certainly  tradition 
points  as  having  concerned  himself  in  writing  history.^  At 
the  same  time  these  very  facts  seem  to  show  conclusively  that 
it  could  not  have  been  written  in  an  age  later  than  that  of 
Samuel.  In  the  writer's  time  the  Hebrews  had  no  weapons, 
no  blacksmiths,  no  art.  In  David's  reign  we  find  ourselves  in 
a  state  of  comparative  wealth  and  splendour.  But  the  tribes 
are  still  all  united.  There  is  no  enmity  between  Joseph  and 
his  brethren.  If  the  history  could  not  have  been  written  in 
the  days  of  David  or  Solomon,  it  must  have  been  written  in 
those  of  Saul — that  is,  in  the  age  of  Samuel*  For  the  fact 
that  Samuel  himself  was  the  Elohist  there  is  thus  the  strongest 
likelihood  ;  but  the  rejection  of  this  surmise  in  no  way  affects 
the  conclusions  reached  by  the  investigations  of  the  Bishop. 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p  70,  -  lb.  p.  73. 

2  lb.  p.  76.  *  lb.  p.  77. 


1 86s.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  6or 

The  Elohist  may  have  lived  in  Samuel's  age,  and  yet  have 
left  no  name  behind  him.  It  is  possible,  but  it  is  by  no  means 
likely.  Nor  are  these  the  only  signs  which  point  to  this 
time.  There  is  in  his  day  no  enmity  between  Esau  and 
Jacob — that  is,  of  course,  between  Edom  and  Israel.  In 
Genesis  xxxvi.  the  Elohist 

"  enters  into  a  long  account  of  the  progeny  of  Esau,  and  the 
different  clans  which  sprang  from  him  ;  and  ....  exhibits  an 
amount  of  interest  in  their  affairs  only  second  to  that  which 
he  felt  in  respect  of  those  of  his  own  people.  And  it  seems 
impossible  to  suppose  that  such  labour  would  have  been 
expended  on  the  annals  of  these  tribes  ....  at  any  period 
after  the  time  of  David,  when  the  feeling  between  the 
Edomites  and  Israelites  must  have  been  very  bitter." 

But  further,  in  Genesis  xxxvi.  31,  the  Elohist  speaks  of 
kings  who  reigned  in  Israel.  This  implies  that  when  he 
wrote  a  king  was  reigning  in  Israel,  and  also  that  he  was 
reigning  over  all  Israel,  and  we  are  thus  again  restricted  to 
the  days  of  Saul,  David,  or  Solomon,  and  the  reasons  which 
debar  us  from  assigning  him  to  the  reign  of  Solomon  or  the 
later  days  of  David  have  been  already  noticed.  There  are 
other  subsidiary  arguments,  most  of  them  very  strong.  One, 
especially,  not  merely  points  to  the  same  time,  but  absolutely 
demonstrates  that  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  was  unknown 
to  him.  His  narrative  speaks  of  the  change  to  monarchical 
government  as  a  great  sin  on  the  part  of  the  people.  The 
language  of  the  Deuteronomist  is  entirely  different,  and  it 
was  part  of  the  special  blessing  upon  Abraham  and  Jacob 
that  kings  should  be  born  to  them.^ 

With  equal  power  and  exactness  the  Bishop  brings  together 
the  evidence  indicating  the  age  of  the  Jehovist.  He  is  later 
than  the  Elohist,  for  he  speaks  of  houses,  and  he  gives  to  the 
ark  a  window,  roof,  door,  and  three  stories  ;  ^  and  the  style  of 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  90  ;  see  also  above,  p.  560.  -  lb.  p.  96. 


6o2  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

these  details,  as  compared  with  the  directions  given  for  making 
the  tabernacle,  leaves  little  room  for  doubting  that  both  sets 
of  directions  have  been  recorded  by  the  same  author.  The 
great  length  at  which  he  gives  the  story  of  Joseph,  and  the 
generosity  which  he  evidently  means  to  ascribe  to  him, 
seem  to  show  that  he  must  have  been  a  man  of  the  tribe  of 
Ephraim  ;  and  in  the  latter  part  of  David's,  or  the  earlier  part 
of  Solomon's,  reign,  an  Ephraimite  might  easily  be  strongly 
attached  to  the  house  of  David.^  Over  the  Bishop's  analysis 
of  Jacob's  blessings,  which  are  full  of  indications  of  time,  all 
pointing  in  one  direction,  we  must  pass  rapidly.  The  bless- 
ing on  Judah  seems  to  have  been  written  with  reference  to 
David's  time,  and  at  a  period  when  he  was  still  exposed  to 
danger  from  within  and  without.^  That  on  Simeon  and  Levi 
looks  much  more  like  a  curse  than  a  blessing.  Both  are  to 
be  separated  and  scattered  ;  and  as  a  tribe  the  Simeonites 
gradually  dwindled  away,  until  in  the  time  of  David  they  can 
scarcely  be  said  to  have  had  any  geographical  existence.^  The 
sentence  on  Levi  from  Jacob's  lips  is  as  different  from  the 
blessing  by  Moses  as  it  can  possibly  be  ;  *  but  the  latter  comes 
from  the  Deuteronomist,  and  was  therefore  written  at  a  time 
when  the  house  of  Levi  was  really  held  in  high  esteem  and 
honour,  and  was  composed,  perhaps,  by  one  who  was  himself 
a  Levite  and  a  priest.  It  is  true  indeed  that  there  is  one 
passage  in  the  First  Book  of  Samuel,  vi.  15, 

"  which  seems  at  iirst  sight  to  be  a  plain  recognition  of  the 
official  position  of  the  Levites  according  to  the  Mosaic  Law. 
.  .  .  But  it  will  be  seen  that  the  Levites  appear  here 
upon  the  scene  very  strangely  and  suddenly.  Not  a  word  is 
said  to  introduce  them,  nor  are  they  named  in  the  history 
for  some  centuries  before,  or  for  a  century  after  this  event. 
Only  in  this  one  single  verse  they  appear  at  the  critical 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  112.  ^  /^  p_  123. 

2  See  above,  pp.  224,  564.  *  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  145. 


1865.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  603 

moment  to  take  down  the  ark,  which  it  was  unlawful 
(according  to  the  law  in  Numbers  i.  51)  for  any  mere  lay- 
man to  do.  But  it  was  just  as  unlawful  for  common  Levites 
to  toiicJi  the  ark." 

If  it  be  said  that  these  Levites  were  also  priests,  how 
did  they,  if  they  knew  the  Law,  dare  to  offer  sacrifice  in  an 
unconsecrated  place  .'*  If  it  be  said  that  the  presence  of  the 
ark  made  this  exceptional  act  allowable,  then  how  did  they 
dare  to  offer  milcJi  kine  as  a  burnt-offering,  when  the  Law 
(Leviticus  i.  3)  declared  that  it  must  be  a  male  without  blemish  ? 
The  whole  account  is  thus  seen  to  be  full  of  difficulties.  In 
looking  down  to  the  connexion  of  the  verse  with  the  context 
we  shall  find  that 

"  it  is  a  later  interpolation  into  the  original  story," 

In  the  preceding  verse  the  men  of  Bethshemesh  cleave  the 
wood  of  the  cart,  and  offer  the  kine  a  burnt-offering  to 
Jehovah. 

"  And  then  after  this,  after  the  cart  had  been  broken  up  and 
burnt,  we  are  told  that  the  Levites  took  down  the  ark  from 
the  cart,  and  placed  it  on  the  great  stone  on  which  apparently 
the  kine  had  just  been  offered,  and  it  is  added,  the  men  of 
Bethshemesh  offered  burnt-offerings  and  sacrificed  sacrifices 
the  same  day  unto  Jehovah,  when  we  have  just  been  told 
that  they  had  '  offered  the  kine.'  In  short,  the  verse  about 
the  Levites  quite  obstructs  the  flow  of  the  narrative,  and  has 
plainly  been  inserted  by  a  later  hand,  in  order  to  avoid  the 
appearance  of  a  sacrilegious  act  in  the  original  story."  ^ 

But  what  bearing  has  the  name  of  Jehovah  on  the  date  of 
the  several  books  of  the  Pentateuch  1  On  the  one  side  we 
have  a  writer  in  Genesis  who  uses  for  "  God  "  only  the  name 
Elohim,  and  who  on  reaching  the  sixth  chapter  of  Exodus 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  155. 


6o4  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  xii, 

gives  an  account  of  the  way  in  which  a  new  name,  Jehovah, 
was  xQvesXed  for  the  first  time  to  Moses,  On  the  other  hand 
we  have  the  Jehovist  not  merely  using  the  name  from  the 
first,  but  using  it  as  a  name  known  to  Canaanites  and  Philis- 
tines, as  well  as  to  the  Hebrews.  It  follows  that  there  are  at 
least  two  writers  concerned  in  the  composition  of  the  Book 
of  Genesis,  and,  further,  that  the  Jehovistic  writer  did  not 
believe  the  incidents  of  the  manifestation  at  the  burning 
bush  related  by  the  Elohist.  But  what  was  the  motive  of  the 
latter  in  framing  this  narration  .''  Can  it  have  been  anything 
but  his  knowledge  that  the  name  was  comparatively  new  to 
the  Hebrews,  and  that  they  did  not  really  know  it  before  the 
Exodus  ;  that,  although  known  at  the  time  when  he  wrote,  it 
was  still  not  in  very  general  use  ;  and  that  he  wished  to  com- 
mend it  to  the  people  by  means  of  this  story  .?  This  much  is 
admitted  by  those  modern  critics  who  have  given  most  atten- 
tion to  this  special  subject.  Among  these  the  foremost  are. 
Hartmann,  Von  Bohlen,  and  Von  der  Aa.  Ewald  holds  that 
in  times  anterior  to  the  Exodus  it  was  used  only  in  the  family 
of  the  ancestors  of  Moses  on  the  mother's  side.  The  quali- 
fication is  ludicrously  improbable,  but  it  is  an  admission  of 
the  unhistorical  character  of  the  story  of  the  incidents  at  the 
burning  bush.     He  admits,  further,  that  although  Moses, 

"  according  to  a  beautiful  legend," 

changed  the  name  of  Hoshea  into  Joshua, 

"  in  order  to  retain  more  firmly  the  remembrance  of  the  new 
religion,  it  still  remained  for  some  centuries  not  very  much 
used  " 

in  the  common  speech  of  Israel.  The  fact,  as  the  Bishop 
insists,  is  incredible  if  Moses  had  really  urged  solemnly 
upon  his  people  the  adoption  of  this  name,  if  he  had  used 
it   habitually  in   his  legislation,  and   encouraged   or  required 


1 86s.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  605 

its  use  by  others.^  If  Ewald  be  right,  it  follows  that  the 
name  was  introduced  in  some  age  later  than  that  of  Moses  ; 
and  we  have  seen  to  what  age  all  the  evidence  seems  to 
point.  As  to  the  name  itself,  Ewald  admits  that  "  it  has 
no  clear  radical  signification  in  Hebrew,"  and  there  is  some- 
thing like  a  complete  consensus  of  critics  that  the  Israelites 
after  their  settlement  in  Canaan  adopted  the  Phoenician  name, 
just  as  they  also  spoke,  however  they  may  have  acquired 
it,  the  language  of  the  Canaanitish  tribes.  Whatever  be  its 
origin,  it  was  the  most  sacred  and  mysterious  name  of  the 
Phoenician  sun-god  ;  and  it  is  useless  to  shut  our  eyes  to  the 
fact  that  the  Israelites  actually  worshipped  the  Phoenician 
Baal  under  this  designation.     Otherwise, 

"  what  is  the  meaning  of  Jephthah's  offering  his  daughter  as 
a  burnt  sacrifice  unto  JHVH  }  or  how  can  we  explain 
otherwise  the  fact  that  they  worshipped  JHVH  with  idola- 
trous rites  and  impure  practices,  not  only  in  the  high  places 
of  Judah  and  Israel,  but  even  in  the  very  Temple  at 
Jerusalem  ?  " 

The  marvellous  confusion  in  their  religious  history,  as  given 
in  the  Books  of  Judges,  Samuel,  and  Kings,  is  really  due,  in 
the  Bishop's  judgement,  to  this  cause  : 

"  that  while  a  few  of  higher  mind  among  them  had  clear  views 
of  the  service  which  the  Living  God  required,  and 
worshipped  Jehovah  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  yet  to  the  eye 
of  the  multitude  the  name  JHVH  represented  only  the 
chief  deity  of  the  tribes  of  Canaan,  the  '  god  of  the  land,' 
and  so  they  defiled  their  worship  with  all  manner  of 
impurities."  ^ 

It  is  indisputable  that  even  during  the  first  eighteen  years 
of  the  reign  of  Josiah  there  were  in  the  Temple  itself  at 
Jerusalem  vessels   made  for   the    sun   and   moon   (Baal   and 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  275.  -  Jb.  p.  284. 


6o6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  xii. 

Ashera)  and  for  the  host  of  heaven.  There  was  also  here  a 
grove  (in  other  words  a  Phallos  or  Linga),  for  which  the 
women  wove  hangings  ;  and  in  the  worship  of  these  symbols^ 
the  priests,  as  a  body,  took  part — nay,  rather,  we  must  say 
that  they  maintained  it.  These  abominations,  on  the  dis- 
covery of  the  Book  of  the  Law,  Josiah  manfully  set  himself  to 
suppress.  He  hewed  down  the  pole,  or  tree,  or  stauros,  which 
served  as  the  sign  of  the  fructifying  power  in  Nature  ;  broke 
to  pieces  the  altar,  or  foundation  of  stone,  answering  to  the 
Hindoo  Yoni,  on  which  the  Ashera  rested  ;  and  at  Samaria, 
and  elsewhere  (though  not  at  Jerusalem),  he  slew  the  idola- 
trous priests,  after  a  fashion  which  must  have  been  a  terrible 
recompense  for  the  human  sacrifices  offered  up  by  those 
priests  themselves.  Josiah's  reform,  short-lived  though  it  was, 
was  trenchant,  and  it  was  short-lived  because  it  was  a  very 
shambles  of  butchery  which  he  sought  to  cleanse.  The  worship 
of  the  Phoenician  sun-god  demanded  hecatombs  of  human 
burnt-offerings,  and  the  Israelites  were  not  to  be  outdone  in 
the  zeal  with  which  they  fed  his  altars  with  human  blood. 
That  the  passing  tJiroiigJi  of  children  is,  in  every  case  where  it 
is  spoken  of,  to  be  interpreted  of  their  slaughter,  the  words  of 
the  prophets  leave  not  a  shadow  of  doubt.  With  an  earnest- 
ness amounting  to  agony,  Jeremiah  speaks  of  the  children  of 
Judah  as  building  the  high  places  of  Tophet  to  biwn  their 
sons  and  daughters  in  the  fire  (vii.  30,  31)  ;  as  filling  the  Temple 
courts  with  the  blood  of  innocents  ;  as  raising  high  places  to 
Baal,  "  to  burn  their  sons  with  fire,  for  burnt-offerings  unto 
Baal,  which  I  commanded  not,  nor  spoke  it,  neither  came  it 
into  my  mind  "  (xix.  4,  5).  This  was  in  the  days  of  Josiah. 
Unless  we  refuse  all  credit  to  the  words  of  Ezekiel,  things 
were  not  much  improved  during  the  Captivity.^  The  prophet 
charges  them  with  sacrificing  their  sons  and  their  daughters 
to  be  devoured  (xvi.  20,  21);  with  slaying  their  children  to 
1  Petitaieuch,  Part  V.  p.  289. 


I £65-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  607 


their  idols,  and  then  coming  red-handed  to  the  sanctuary  of 
God  (xxiii.  '^'j^  39).    We  should  know  therefore  what  is  meant 
when  we  read    that    Ahaz  and    Manasseh    made   their    sons 
to  pass  through  the   fire,  even  if  Josephus  had   not   told   us 
plainly  that  they  made  holocausts  of  them.     We  turn  with 
loathing  from  the  pictures  given  of  the  fiendish   brutality  of 
Mexican  worship  ;     but  we  have  scanty  grounds  indeed  for 
thinking  that  the  religion  of  the  Israelites  as  a  nation,  even  in 
the   time  of   Josiah,   was   much  less   cruel   and   bloodthirsty. 
What,  moreover,  are  we  to  say  when  amongst  the  Levitical 
laws  in  the  Pentateuch  we  find  statutes  which  imperatively 
insist  on  the  slaughter  of  human  victims  ?     On  the  traditional 
theories   they  are    emphatically  a    scandal   as   great  as   any 
which  Jeroboam  the  son  of  Nebat  set  up  in  Bethel  or  Dan  ; 
but   that   the   statutes    are    there  is  certain.      The   devoted 
things,  it  is  said,  shall  not  be  sold,  and  shall  not  be  redeemed. 

"  Every  Kherim,  which  shall  be  devoted  out  of  man,  shall  not 
be  redeemed  ;  it  shall  surely  be  put  to  death  "  (Leviticus 
xxvii.  28,  29). 

The  Bishop's  analysis  has  shown  conclusively  that  the  so- 
called  Mosaic  legislation  consists  of  enactments  framed  in 
different  ages  and  lands,  many,  if  not  most,  of  them  having 
never  had  any  existence  except  on  paper.  These  particular 
enactments  are  perhaps  among  the  oldest,  and  they  were 
carried  out  with  ruthless  exactitude,  although  prophet  after 
prophet  pleaded  that  God  had  never  issued  any  such  com- 
mands, and  that  it  had  never  entered  into  His  heart  to  do 
so.  But  these  very  expressions  prove  incontestably  that  the 
people  must  have  alleged  some  authority  for  the  practice, 
emanating  as  they  declared  from  Jehovah  Himself ;  and  in 
these  Levitical  statutes  they  had  this  authority.  That  the 
practice  should  have  gone  on  with  lavish  ferocity  even  after 
the  men  of  Judah  found  themselves  captives  on  the  flats  of 


6o8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

Babylon  is  melancholy  and  conclusive  proof  indeed  that  the 
teaching  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  had  not  been  left  as  an 
inheritance  for  the  people  nigh  a  thousand  years  earlier.  In 
short,  we  have  really  no  adequate  warrant  for  supposing  that 
the  subjects  of  Solomon  or  Josiah  were  much,  if  at  all,  better 
in  this  respect  than  those  of  Jeroboam  or  Ahab.  The  Bishop 
cautions  us  against  forgetting  that 

"we  have  no  account  of  the  doings  of  the  people  of  Israel 
from  their  own  point  of  view,  but  only  one  written  from  the 
point  of  view  which  would  be  taken  by  a  man  of  Judah, 
betraying  often  political  as  well  as  religious  animosity."  ^ 

The  fact  that  Josiah  himself,  while  he  mercilessly  slew  the 
idolatrous  priests  of  Samaria,  merely  inhibited  those  of  Jeru- 
salem from  performing  sacred  offices,  can  be  explained 
probably  only  on  the  supposition  that  he  wished  to  be  rid 
of  the  priesthood  as  well  as  of  the  high  places  in  Israel,  so 
as  to  concentrate  the  religious  regards  of  the  people  more 
thoroughly  upon  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem.  But  while  the 
true  state  of  religion  amongst  the  children  of  Abraham  is 
thus  brought  before  us,  how  startling  a  light  is  thrown  on  the 
laws  and  discourses  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy !  The 
injunctions  to  throw  down  the  altars,  to  burn  the  Ashera,  to 
defile  the  high  places,  instead  of  being  commands  issued  to 
an  obedient  people  many  centuries  before,  are  seen  to  be 
passionate  pleadings  for  a  reformation  most  urgently  needed 
still.  The  abominations  denounced  were  not  those  of  long 
past  ages,  but  impurities  and  iniquities  which  made  the  hearts 
of  all  good  and  true  men  sink  within  them,  even  in  the 
Babylonish  exile.  With  the  bloodthirsty  worship  and  foul 
orgies  of  the  people,  the  language  of  the  prophets  {i.e.  of  the 
insignificantly  small  minority  which  lifted  up  its  voice  against 
all  these  abominations)  presents,  in  the  Bishop's  words, 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  297. 


186$.  '  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  609 

"  a  most  wonderful  and  amazing  contrast,  and  by  that  very- 
contrast,  more  forcibly  than  any  blind  dogma  of  Scriptural 
infallibility  could,  they  spoke  God's  word  to  man,  and 
taught  Divine  truth  as  they  were  '  moved  by  the  Holy 
Ghost.'  "  1 

The  efforts  of  the  Elohist  to  raise  his  countrymen  by 
attaching  higher  thoughts  of  God  to  the  name  Jehovah  was 
a  distinct  step  onwards  in  the  education  of  the  world  ;  and 
in  the  sincerity  and  purity  of  this  effort  there  were  very  few 
who  came  up  to  him. 

"  The  Jehovist  in  the  next  age  appears  to  have  had  less  grand 
and  becoming  views  of  the  Divine  Being,  using  frequently 
very  strong  anthropomorphisms,  and  ascribing  continually 
to  Jehovah  human  actions.  Still  later  writers  of  the  Penta- 
teuch appear  to  have  made  the  worship  of  Jehovah  to  consist 
chiefly  in  the  punctilious  performance  of  outward  forms 
and  ceremonies,  lustrations,  and  sacrifices,  and  the  due 
payment  of  tithes  and  firstlings.  At  last  the  Deuteronomist 
breathed  a  new  life  into  the  dead  letter  of  the  Law,  and 
wrote  the  words  of  the  second  covenant,  '  the  covenant  in 
the  land  of  Moab,'  which  were  to  the  records  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, as  then  existing,  what  the  writings  of  the  New 
Testament  are  to  those  of  the  Old." 

The  Pentateuch  thus  became  the  record  of  a  nation's  thought 
and  life  through  many  centuries.  No  portion  of  it,  perhaps, 
was  brought  into  its  present  shape  before  the  time  of  Saul 
and  Samuel,  and  its  latest  parts  were  not  put  together  before 
the  age  of  Manasseh  or  Josiah.  To  have  proved  these  facts 
is,  of  itself,  to  have  done  a  great  work  ;  and  the  Bishop  might 
well  have  been  contented  with  the  thought  that  he  had  dis- 
entangled the  twisted  chain  of  narratives  interlaced  one  within 
the  other  by  the  additions  and  insertions  of  successive  writers. 
But  he  has  done  much  more.     He  has  brought  together  the 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  300. 
VOL.  I.  R  R 


6io  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  xii. 

immense  mass  of  evidence  which  points  personally  to  Samuel 
as  the  author  of  the  Elohistic  narrative.  He  has  shown 
between  the  thoughts  and  words  of  the  Deuteronomist  and 
those  of  the  prophet  Jeremiah  a  closeness  of  agreement  which 
could  not  be  exceeded  if  the  Deuteronomist  and  the  prophet 
were  one  and  the  same  person.  The  task  taken  in  hand  is 
thus  practically  achieved.  The  Pentateuch  is  in  no  part  the 
work  of  Moses,  and  in  no  part  is  the  narrative  thoroughly 
historical.  It  becomes  therefore  rather  a  matter  of  curious 
inquiry  than  of  necessary  investigation  to  carry  the  analysis 
further  with  the  view  of  ascertaining  whether  there  may,  or 
may  not,  have  been  more  than  two  writers  occupied  with  the 
reduction  of  the  Pentateuch  to  its  present  form.  The  Bishop 
has  carried  on  the  analysis,  with  the  result  of  finding,  as  we 
have  in  part  seen  already,  that,  besides  the  Elohist  and  the 
Deuteronomist,  there  was  a  Jehovistic  writer  distinct  from  both, 
who  is  probably  the  same  person  as  the  second  Elohist,  and  a 
second  Jehovist  who  made  certain  additions  to  the  book  of 
the  first.  The  Bishop  shows  the  result  in  the  following  tabular 
form  : — 

Coniemf'orar}' 
B.C.  Prophet. 

Elohist iioo — io6o      .    .    .       Samuel. 

Second  Elohist ) 1060-1010  .  .  .  Nathan. 

Jehovist  .    .    .   ) 

Second  Jehovist 1035  .  .  .  Gad. 

Deuteronomist 641—624  .  .  .  Jeremiah. ^ 


A  discussion  has  been  raised  as  to  the  date  of  the  second 
Jehovist,  some  critics  contending  that  he  belongs  to  a  time 
long  subsequent  to  the  Captivity.  With  the  perfect  candour 
which  characterises  all  his  work,  the  Bishop,  in  the  concluding 
chapter  of  his  Fifth  Part,  gives  the  whole  of  the  argument  and 
evidence  adduced  for  this  conclusion.  He  returns  to  the 
question  again  in  the  twenty-sixth  chapter  of  his  Sixth  Part, 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  iSi. 


i86s.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  6ii 

premising  only  that,  as  regards  the  great  main  question  of  his 
work,  viz.  the  non-Mosaic  origin  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  the 
unhistorical  character  of  its  narrative, 

"  it  would  be  of  no  consequence  whatever  should  a  more 
searching  criticism  decisively  demonstrate  the  later  origin 
of  some  portion  at  least — if  not  of  all — of  the  Jehovistic 
passages  in  Genesis,  or  show  that  their  composition 
extended  over  two  or  three  centuries."  ^ 

A  more  searching  and  patient  examination  than  that  which 
the  Bishop  devotes  to  this  theory  could  not  well  be  imagined. 
His  conclusion,  I'esting  on  evidence  which  seems  to  leave  no 
room  for  doubt,  is,  that 

*'  the  Jehovistic  passages,  which  form  the  main  substance  of 
the  original  story  of  the  Exodus," 

were  written  between  1060  and  1020  B.C.,^  and  that  the 
Elohistic  passages  are  the  oldest  portion  of  the  Pentateuch, 
and  the  foundation,  in  fact,  of  the  whole  story.^ 

But  he  in  no  way  bound  himself  to  the  assertion  that  these 
contemporary  prophets  were  actually  the  writers  of  the  corre- 
sponding sections  of  Genesis,  although  it  is  certain  that  some 
such  men  must  have  written  them. 

If,  however,  the  Pentateuch  can  no  longer  be  regarded  as  a 
contemporary  historical  narrative,  its  historical  value  is  greatly 
increased  from  other  points  of  view.  Bishop  Browne  had 
charged  Dr.  Colenso  not  merely  with  denying  the  sojourn  in 
Misraim,  the  Exodus,  and  the  conquest  of  Canaan,  but  also 
with  hostility  to  the  Pentateuch  itself.  To  these  assertions 
the  Bishop  gave  "  a  direct  and  emphatic  contradiction."  ^  He 
had  not  denied  any  one  of  the  points  specified  by  Bishop 
Browne.     He  had  distinctly  and   repeatedly  asserted  them. 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  539  -  lb.  p.  574. 

3  lb.  p.  588.  "•  Part  V.  p.  307. 

R  R  2 


6i2  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

The  charge  of  hostility  to  the  Pentateuch  resolved  itself  into 
a  charge  of  hostility  to  Bishop  Browne's  particular  view  of  the 
Pentateuch.^ 

To  this  view  he  was  indeed  opposed  utterly,  as  to  a 
view  which  distorted  everything,  and  did  full  justice  to 
nothing,  which  made  it  impossible  to  avoid  shiftiness  of 
interpretation,  if  not  downright  evasion  and  falsehood.  The 
amount  of  historical  or  other  instruction  to  be  derived  from 
the  Pentateuch  by  Bishop  Browne's  method  is  poor  indeed, 
as  compared  with  that  which  may  be  drawn  from  it  by  an 
application  of  the  true  critical  method. 

"  The  beggarly  condition  of  the  Levites  in  the  early  days  of 
David  as  revealed  in  Genesis  xlix.  ;  .  .  .  .  their  increased  in- 
fluence in  Josiah's  time,  as  implied  in  the  Book  of  Deutero- 
nomy ;  the  minute  specifications  for  the  building  of  the 
Tabernacle,  which  read  almost  as  if  they  were  taken  from 
the  working  drawings  of  the  Temple  itself,  by  some  one 
who  was  personally  concerned  in  the  execution  ;  the  in- 
junction which  commands  human  sacrifices  (Leviticus  xxvii.), 
and  the  narrative  in  Genesis  xxii.,  which,  while  not  con- 
demning— rather  approving — yet  seems  intended  to  dis- 
courage them, — all  these,  and  a  multitude  of  other  similar 
notices,  require  only  to  be  freed  from  the  restraints  of 
conventional,  traditionary  interpretations,  and  they  will  at 
once  become  instinct  with  life  and  meaning.  In  short,  the 
whole  Pentateuch,  to  the  critical  eye,  is  pregnant  with 
history ;  and  the  driest  details  of  the  Levitical  law  may 
yield  somewhat  of  interest  and  importance,  or  illustrate  the 
course  of  religious  development  in  Israel, 

"  Thus  I  reverence  with  all  my  heart  the  Pentateuch  as  con- 
taining some  of  the  most  ancient  .  .  .  writings  in  the  world, 
.  .  .  though  it  contains  also  some  of  much  later  date  ;  as 
conveying  to  us,  directly,  or  by  reasonable  inference,  a  know- 
ledge of  some  of  the  earliest  facts  in  human  history  ;  .  .  .  . 
above  all,  as  recording,  apparently,  the  first  movements  of 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  308.     See  also  above,  pp.  415  et  seq. 


1 865.  THE  PENT  A  TE  UCH :    ITS  GEO  WTH.  6 1 3 


a  higher  Divine  life  in  the  hearts  of  men  of  the  Israelitish 
race,  from  which  our  own  religious  life  has  been  to  a  great 
extent  derived  ;  the  kindling  of  that  spiritual  flame,  which  in 
Israel's  worst  days  was  never  suffered  to  be  quite  extin- 
guished, but,  fed  from  time  to  time  with  fresh  supplies  from 
the  Eternal  Source,  blazed  out  at  length  upon  the  nations, 
bright  and  clear,  in  the  full  glory  of  the  teaching  of 
Christ."  1 

The  Bishop  had,  in  short,  achieved  a  work  which  entitles 
him  to  the  gratitude  of  his  countrymen  for  all  time.  He  had 
brought  light  where  traditionalists  could  only  spread  mist  and 
darkness.  By  them  he  was  naturally  opposed.  The  extreme 
zealots  of  the  party  insisted  that 

"we  must  either  receive  the  Verbal  Inspiration  of  the  Old 
Testament,  or  deny  the  veracity,  the  honesty,  the  integrity 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  the  Teacher  of  Divine  Truth."  - 

The  more  moderate  could  urge,  as  Bishop  Browne  urged, 
that 

"without  overlooking  the  difficulties  which  modern  science 
has  raised,  we  still  may  say  that  far  more  formidable  prob- 
lems occur  in  life  and  in  religion  than  the  apparent 
inconsistency  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  with  the  now 
generally  acknowledged  antiquity  of  the  universe." 

The  statement  is  not  true,  and  it  is  unfortunate  that  most 
of  the  assertions  of  such  critics  have  to  be  met  by  a  flat  denial. 
To  these  words  the  Bishop  of  Natal  replies  by  saying 

"  that  there  is  no  analogy  whatever  between  the  things  com- 
pared,— on  the  one  hand,  moral  and  religious  difficulties 
which  perplex  us  in  life  ;  on  the  other  hand,  statements  in 
the  Bible,  which  arc  flatly  contradicted   by  scientific  facts, 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  310. 

2  Canon  M'Neile,  cited  in  Part  V.  p.  314.  See  also  The  Great 
Dilemma,  above,  p.  303. 


6i4  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  xii. 

and  which  yet  are  beheved  to  be  Divinely  and   infallibly 
true."  ^ 

Bishop  Browne,  however,  had  no  scruple  in  arguing  as 
follows  : — 

"  You  know  that  your  religion  is  of  God  ;  and,  if  so,  most 
probably  some  of  it  may  not  be  quite  clear  to  man.  ...  If 
the  very  subject  makes  it  likely  that  there  will  be  difficulties, 
the  mode  of  delivery,  the  way  in  which  it  all  comes  down 
to  us,  make  it  also  likely  that  there  will  occur  parts 
and  passages  which  may  be  puzzling,  and  in  which  the 
puzzles  may  be  even  inexplicable." 

The  puzzles  of  which  Bishop  Browne  is  speaking  refer  to 
such  difficulties  as  are  met  with  in  the  stories  of  the 
Patriarchs  ;  in  the  process  which  in  some  four  or  five  genera- 
tions expands  a  troop  of  seventy  persons  into  a  nation  of 
three  or  four  millions  ;  in  the  mystery  attaching  to  the  main- 
tenance of  this  nation,  with  its  millions  of  cattle,  for  forty 
years  in  a  waterless  desert.  But  it  must  be  repeated  again 
and  again,  and  too  great  stress  cannot  be  laid  on  the  fact,  that 
these,  and  any  other  like,  things  have  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  "  our  religion,"  -  and  do  not  in  the  remotest  degree  affect 
it.  The  remark  is,  therefore,  altogether  irrelevant ;  but  this 
is  not  all.     The  Bishop  of  Natal  rightly  adds  : — 

"  The  parts  and  passages  of  the  Bible  with  which  we  have 
here  to  do  arc  not  '  puzzling'  at  all,  except  on  the  fallacious 
theory  of  their  infallible  accuracy.  Once  allow  that  in  all 
matters  of  this  kind  the  Bible  must  give  account  of  itself — 
of  its  contents,  its  age,  its  origin — ^just  like  any  other  book, 
and  the  mind  will  no  more  be  harassed  ....  with  these 
innumerable  and  inexplicable  '  puzzles.'  But  what  a  fearful 
responsibility  do  those  take  upon  themselves  who,  in  an  age 
like  this  of  earnest  inquiry  and  progress,  not  only  do  nothing 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  314.  2  See  p.  310. 


1865.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  615 

themselves  to  remove  these  dangerous  fallacies,  but  by  half- 
uttered  insinuations  encourage — if  they  do  not  actually  by 
plain  outspoken  words  lead  on — the  unreasoning  multitude 
to  deride  the  honest  endeavours  to  reconcile  religious  truth 
with  the  certain  results  of  science,  as  the  work  of  '  minute 
and  clever  criticism,'  near  akin  to  the  folly  of  atheism."  ^ 

We  shall  have  to  notice  more  fully,  later  on,  the  critical 
method  of  Bishop  Harold  Browne,  and  more  particularly  the 
spirit  in  which  he  deals  with  the  subject.  For  the  present  we 
need  only  cite  the  words  quoted  from  him  by  Bishop  Colenso. 

"  Who  would  think  of  reading  Nature  only  through  a  micro- 
scope }  The  eye  that  was  so  cramped  would  be  quick  to 
find  flaws  in  the  emerald  and  dust  on  the  wings  of  a  butter- 
fly ;  but  it  could  not  look  out  on  all  the  fair  proportions  of 
the  universe,  nor  see  the  harmony  of  God's  creatures  round 
it.  The  lens  of  microscopic  criticism  is  useful  in  its  place 
of  duty  ;  but  blinding,  rather  than  enlightening,  when  it  is 
the  chief  avenue  by  which  light  can  find  its  way  to 
the  eye." 

So  far  as  these  words  have  any  meaning  (and  some  of  the 
clauses  look  very  much  like  nonsense),  this  statement  also  is 
utterly  untrue.  It  is  the  naked  eye  only,  surveying  a  multi- 
tude of  objects  at  will,  which  discerns,  or  may  be  tempted  to 
fancy  that  it  discerns,  blots  and  flaws.  The  microscope, 
directed  to  some  single  object, 

"  will  detect  no  flaws  in  the  perfect  works  of  God,  and  may 
therefore  be  applied  to  them  without  fear.  It  does  not  find 
dust  on  the  butterfly's  wings,  but  finds  the  apparent  dust 
to  be  beautiful  feathers  ;  whereas  in  mans  workmanship  it 
does  detect  roughness  and  defect,  and  other  signs  of  human 
imperfection.  Nor  will  it  detect  flaws  or  imperfections  in 
the  infallible,  eternal  Word  of  God.     Rather,  the  '  lens  of 

1  Pentateudi,  Part  \.  p.  315. 


6i6  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xil.    ,, 

microscopic  criticism '  has  never  been  applied  to  reach  into 
the  moral  and  spiritual  truth  contained  in  the  Bible, — how 
absurd,  or  else  how  misleading,  to  reason  as  if  it  could  be  ! — 
but  merely  to  examine  the  human  element,  the  earthly- 
framework,  of  the  Scriptures  ;  and  in  being  used  to  prove 
its  imperfections,  it  may  be  the  means  of  delivering  us  from 
an  idolatrous  worship  of  the  mere  letter  of  the  Bible,  others 
(and  how  many  in  this  day !)  from  rejecting  altogether  the 
Divine  teaching  of  God's  Word  in  the  Bible,  on  account  of 
its  supposed  identity  with  what  is  manifestly  false."  ^ 

But  the  upholders  of  traditionalism  seem  to  be  driven  by 
an  irresistible  necessity  to  settle  a  controversy  as  to  past  facts, 
or  to  free  themselves  from  the  duty  of  foresight,  by  sheltering 
themselves  under  the  authority  of  our  Lord  Himself  On  this 
subject,  as  the  Bishop  of  Natal  notices,  the  Bishop  of  Ely 
made  large  admissions. 

^'  If  our  Lord  was  perfect  man,  .  .  .  His  human  mind  could 
have  possessed  only  a  certain  amount  of  knowledge  :  the 
absence  of  knowledge  is  ignorance,  .  .  .  and,  therefore, 
our  Lord  as  man  must  have  been  partially  ignorant." 

But  the  Bishop  of  Natal  had  said  that  our  Lord  "  may 
have  shared  in  the  mistakes  of  the  age  in  which  He  lived,  as 
regards  the  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  "  ;  and  this  statement 
provoked  a  vehement  protest  from  Bishop  Browne. 

*'  Ignorance,"  he  urged,  "  does  not  of  necessity  involve  error. 
.  .  .  And  there  is  not  one  word  in  the  Bible  which  would 
lead  us  to  suppose  that  our  blessed  Lord  was  liable  to 
error,  in  any  sense  of  the  word,  or  in  any  department  of 
knowledge." 

Bishop  Browne  speaks  as  though  the  term  "  error "  might 

have  a  hundred  meanings.      He  was    bound  in   such  a  case 

as  this  to  give  an   accurate  definition  of  the  meaning  which 

he  attached  to  the  word.      That  ignorance    involves  liabilit}' 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  V.  p.  316. 


1865.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  617 

to  mistakes  in  any  matters  as  to  which  a  person  is  ignorant 
there  is  no  sort  of  doubt  ;  and  if  Bishop  Browne  means 
that  our  Lord's  ignorance  did  not  extend  to  any  matters  on 
which  He  might  be  suddenly  called  to  give  an  opinion,  or 
that  He  could  reach  full  knowledge  on  any  subject  without 
paying  to  it  the  amount  of  attention  which  the  subject 
needed,  or  without  means  of  information  or  the  power  of 
getting  it,  then  assuredly  he  is  asserting  that  our  Lord  was 
not  perfect  man.  If  then  He  had  been  questioned  as  to  the 
authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  He  could  not  have  given  an 
answer  without  studying  the  subject,  and  for  this  there  was 
no  opportunity.  But  He  was  not  questioned  on  the  subject ; 
and  if,  on  the  hypothesis  of  this  fact,  He  had  spoken  of  the 
Pentateuch  as  non-Mosaic,  or  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  as 
the  work  of  Jeremiah,  His  words  would  have  been  utterly 
unintelligible  to  His  hearers,  and  He  would  have  been 
frustrating  hopelessly  at  the  outset  the  very  object  of  His 
mission.^  But  Bishop  Browne  insists  that  our  Lord  was 
subject  to  all  human  infirmities,  "  weakness,  weariness,  sorrow, 
fear,  suffering,  temptation,  ignorance,"  while  from  this  list  he 
excludes  error  and  mistake.  But  what  are  error  and  mistake 
but  the  merest  human  infirmities  .-*  Is  there  in  them  any 
deliberate  choice  of  evil  .'' 

"  Is  there  sin,"  the  Bishop  of  Natal  asks,  "  in  a  mistake .'' 
When  a  savage  mistakes  a  string  of  beads  for  articles  of 
value,  or  a  civilised  Englishman  mistakes  mere  paste  for 
diamond,  is  there  any  sin  in  this  .'*" 

To  say  that  a  man  has  "  made  a  mistake"  is  to  acquit  him 
of  all  moral  blame  ;  but,  although  Bishop  Browne  does  not 
say  it  in  so  many  words,  he  evidently  thinks  that  any  mis- 
take with  regard  to  the  authorship  or  date  of  the  Pentateuch 
must  be  morally  culpable. 

1  See,  further,  p.  307,  note. 


6i8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  .  chap,  xik 

"  Christ  was  .  .  .  sent  for  so  high  a  purpose  that  we 
cannot  behevc  Him  to  have  been  in  error  as  to  that  which 
concerned  the  truth  and  the  ground-work  of  the  rehgion 
which  was  before  them." 

Neither  the  one  nor  the  other  was  concerned  in  any  questions 
relating  to  the  composition  of  the  Books  of  Deuteronomy  or 
Joshua.  In  thinking  that  it  is  so  concerned,  Bishop  Browne 
is,  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  term,  in  error.  He  is  wandering 
away  from  a  right  path  into  regions  of  fog  and  mist,  where  he 
must  become  more  and  more  hable  to  make  mistakes  as  to  the 
meaning  and  nature  of  rehgion.  Rather,  in  the  Bishop  of 
Natal's  words, 

"  that  intense  longing,  which  pervades  so  many  earnest  hearts 
in  this  our  day,  in  all  countries  and  in  all  classes,  to  find 
a  way  for  ourselves  and  others  out  of  the  narrow  dogmatic 
systems  in  which  in  our  different  Churches  we  have  all 
been  more  or  less  trained,  into  that  Christianity  of  which 
Dean  Milman  speaks,' comprehensive,  all-embracing, catholic, 
which  knows  what  is  essential  to  religion,  what  is  temporary 
and  extraneous  to  it,'  ...  is  to  my  own  mind  a  certain 
proof  that  the  Divine  Educator  Himself  is  here,  and  the 
Spirit  of  God  moving  even  now  upon  the  face  of  the 
waters."  ^ 

Of  his  fifth  volume,  which  has  now  been  passed  briefly  in 
review,  the  Bishop  might  well  speak  in  his  preface  as  the 
most  important  part  of  his  work.  It  dealt  to  the  traditional 
theories  a  blow  which  will  be  found  to  be  irretrievable  ;  but  to 
these  irresistible  arguments  he  added  a  task  of  immense 
labour,  in  a  complete  analysis  of  the  whole  Book  of  Genesis, 
appended  to  this  Part.  The  toil  spent  on  this  analysis  would 
not,  he  felt,  be  spent  in  vain.  The  document  was  at  least  a 
record  of  facts  which  must  be  taken  into  account  by  all  future 

1  Peniateudi,  Part  V.  p.  320. 


I87I-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  619 

labourers  in  this  field,  and  which  could  not  fail  to  afford  some 
help  to  others  in  the  prosecution  of  their  inquiries.^ 

The  Bishop's  letters  to  be  cited  hereafter  explain  the  way 
in  which  his  task  in  its  later  portions  expanded  before  him  ; 
so  that  two  large  volumes  came  to  be  needed  when  he  had 
supposed  that  one  would  suffice.  Those  of  his  opponents  for 
whom  the  use  of  all  weapons  was  lawful  or  allowable  were  not 
slow  to  avail  themselves  of  this  circumstance  in  order  to  throw 
ridicule  on  his  work.  The  commercial  success  which  repaid 
his  toil  in  the  earlier  parts  had  tempted  him  on,  they  said, 
further  and  further  into  ventures  more  and  more  rash,  and  to 
oppress  a  dwindling  number  of  readers  with  bulky  tomes 
which  would  not  repay  their  cost.  In  some  respects  they 
were  not  very  wide  of  the  mark.  If  the  later  volumes  repaid 
their  expenses,  they  did  not  much  more.  The  Bishop  was 
perfectly  aware  that  he  could  expect  no  other  result  finan- 
cially ;  but  few  things  throughout  a  life  full  of  honour  are 
more  to  his  credit  than  the  devotion  with  which  he  did  what 
he  found  necessary  to  the  full  accomplishment  of  his  under- 
taking, without  pausing  to  consider  whether  he  himself  should 
derive  any  personal  advantage  from  it.  The  excitement  of 
the  war  which  followed  the  publication  of  his  First  Part  had  long 
passed  away  ;  and  he  had  no  expectation  that  many  outside 
the  scanty  company  of  genuine  students  and  scholars  would 
grapple  with  these  later  investigations.  But,  in  spite  of  this 
seemingly  forbidding  prospect,  he  persevered  ;  and  the 
thinkers — by  whom,  after  all,  the  intellectual  activity  of  the 
nation  is  directed — will  be  grateful  to  him  for  having 
done  so. 

His  Sixth  and  Seventh  Parts  arc  indeed  volumes  of  formid- 
able size  ;  but  those  only  who  take  the  trouble  to  examine 
the  conditions  under  which  he  worked,  and  the  objects  which 
he  set  before  himself,  are  qualified  to  judge  whether  they 
^  Pcnfateuc/i,  Part  V.  p.  ix. 


620  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 


could  without  injury  have  been  made  much  smaller.  It  was,  he 
saw,  far  better  not  to  do  the  work  at  all  than  to  fail  to  do  it 
thoroughly.  He  had  undertaken  at  starting  to  show  that  the 
narratives  in  the  Pentateuch  and  the  Book  of  Joshua  were 
not,  as  a  whole,  historical ;  and  the  conclusion  to  which  each 
step  in  the  inquiry  brought  him  compelled  him  to  extend  his 
examination  to  the  whole  body  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures. 
The  general  result  is,  indeed,  astonishing.  While  traditionalists 
of  every  school  are  cheating  themselves  with  the  notion  that 
in  these  Scriptures  they  possess  records  absolutely  trust- 
worthy, and  dare  to  propound  their  notions  as  decrees  to  be 
accepted  by  the  world  at  large,  the  analysis  of  these  docu- 
ments reveals  not  merely  that  predominance  of  myth  which 
marks  the  so-called  early  history  of  all  nations,  but  a  vast 
array  of  deliberately  garbled  facts,  and,  in  more  than  one 
instance,  the  dissemination  of  stories  whose  fictitious  character 
stands  out  as  clearly  as  the  noonday  sun  in  a  cloudless  sky. 
Nor  can  it  be  too  often  or  too  strongly  repeated,  that  these 
fictions  are  brought  to  light,  not  in  reference  to  signs,  wonders, 
prodigies,  portents,  miracles,  or  to  any  events  or'  incidents  of 
an  unusual  sort,  but  in  the  most  ordinary  matters  of  every-day 
life,  which  betray  the  working  of  very  human  and  very  in- 
terested, as  well  as  very  unworthy,  motives  .■*  It  would  be  a 
mistake,  therefore,  to  suppose  that  in  these  concluding  volumes 
the  Bishop  reaches  results  which  materially  modify  his  pre- 
vious judgements.  His  readiness,  nay,  his  eagerness,  to  admit 
a  mistake,  so  soon  as  the  mistake  has  been  clearly  pointed 
out,  leads  him  occasionally  to  withdraw  or  to  qualify  some 
statements  already  made  ;  but  on  the  whole  the  amount  of 
retractation  or  correction  is  insignificantly  small,  and  the 
general  result  is  simply  that  assurance  is  made  doubly  sure, 
by  the  rigid  scrutiny  to  which,  in  these  concluding  volumes, 
the  documents  already  examined  in  the  earlier  volumes  are 
subjected. 


I87I-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  621 

In  the  eyes  of  traditionalists,  the  Pentateuch  exhibits  a 
most  minute  and  elaborate  legislation,  political,  religious,  and 
social,  which  challenges  acceptance  on  the  authority  of  Moses, 
and  of  the  Elohim  in  whose  name  he  speaks  ;  and  which 
therefore  is  held  to  be  older  than  the  conquest  of  Canaan, 
older  than  the  rule  of  the  Judges,  older  than  the  establishment 
of  the  monarchy,  older  than  the  fall  of  the  kingdom  thus 
established.  The  Bishop's  earlier  volumes  have  shown  that 
this  impression  is  in  complete  antagonism  with  facts,  that  this 
legislation  was  unknown  to  the  exiles  who  came  out  of  Egypt, 
unknown  in  the  time  of  the  Judges,  unknown  under  the 
early  Kings,  and  known  only  in  the  slightest  degree  under 
the  sovereigns  who  ruled  in  Judah  after  the  downfall  of  the 
kingdom  of  Israel.  His  investigations  proved  that  the  Book 
of  Deuteronomy  was  composed,  possibly  in  the  later  years  of 
Manasseh,  but  with  immensely  greater  likelihood  in  the 
earlier  part  of  the  reign  of  Josiah,  and  that  the  author  of 
it  was  a  man  whose  tone  of  thought,  whose  language,  and 
whose  religious  convictions,  were,  to  say  the  least,  astonish- 
ingly like  those  of  the  prophet  Jeremiah.  The  path  is  still 
more  cleared  by  the  discovery  that  portions  of  the  Levitical 
Tegislation  may  be  traced  home  to  the  prophet  Ezekiel  ; 

"  that  the  account  of  the  construction  of  the  ark,  tabernacle, 
&c.,  in  Exodus  xxv.  &c.,  connot  possibly  have  formed  part 
of  the  original  (Elohistic)  story,  but  must  have  been  written 
at  a  later  age  than  Deuteronomy,  and,  therefore,  during  or 
after  the  Captivity  ;  "  ^ 

that,  further,  this  original  story  did  not  contain  the  Deca- 
logue ;  that  the  latter  is  probably  due  to  the  Deuteronomist, 
who  is  the  author  of  both  the  versions  of  the  precepts  of  the 
Two  Tables  ;  and  that  the  later  Levitical  legislation  is  later  by 
many  centuries  than   even    the   Babylonish  captivit}'.     This 

1  Pcntafcuc/i,  Part  VI.  p.  vii. 


I 


622  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xil. 


legislation  therefore  claims  an  authority  which  does  not 
belong  to  it.  It  is  not  a  code  of  laws  imparted  by  God  Him- 
self to  Moses,  and  therefore  it  can  impart  no  sanction  to  the 
elaborate  ritualism  which  it  enjoins.  But  on  this  sanction 
depends  confessedly  the  ritualism  of  the  whole  Christian 
Church  ;  and  thus  with  these  investigations  the  whole  ritual- 
istic system,  as  a  system  of  Divine  institution,  falls  to  the 
ground.^ 

It  has  been  said  that  the  Bishop's  conclusions  are  merely  . 
negative ;  that  the  old  records  are  pulled  to  pieces,  and 
nothing  is  put  in  their  place.  It  is  not  so.  The  notion 
that  negative  conclusions  are  not  a  positive  addition  to  our 
knowledge  is  a  thorough  delusion.-  They  are  so  in  every 
instance  in  which  the  negative  conclusion  is  established  on 
fairly  adequate  evidence.  Every  such  conclusion  is  in  all 
likelihood  a  death-blow  to  some  groundless  fancy  and  belief, 
or  even  to  some  mischievous  and  even  deadly  superstition. 
No  garbled  history  has  been  more  potent  for  harm  than  that 
of  the  Hebrew  chronicler,  and  the  exhibition  of  the  process 
by  which  this  history  has  been  garbled  is  no  work  of  mere 
wanton  demolition.  It  is  a  most  righteous  effort  for  the 
suppression  of  error  and  the  advancement  of  truth.  To  the 
reproaches  freely  uttered  against  his  supposed  destructive 
criticism,  reproaches  uttered  as  vehemently  by  men  like  Mr. 
Stopford  Brooke  as  by  narrower  thinkers,  the  Bishop  con- 
tented himself  with  replying  that 

"  the  central  truths  of  Christianity — the  Fatherhood  of  God, 
the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  the  revelation  of  God  in  man — 
....  are  confirmed  by  the  witness  which  the  Pentateuch, 
when  stripped  of  its  fictitious  character,  gives  of  the  working 
of  the  one  Divine  Spirit  in  all  ages."  ^ 

But  if  some  decried  the  Bishop's  work  as  merely  negative, 

I  Pcjitafetich,  Part  VI.  p.  x.  -  See  p.  441. 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  xv. 


1 87 1-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  623 

there  were  others  who  would  gladly  dismiss  it  as  effete,  if  not 
childish.  It  was  convenient  for  some  to  do  this.  It  was 
especially  convenient  for  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  who 
assured  his  clergy  that  the  Bishop  of  Natal's  books  had 
been  "  refuted  by  one  writer  after  another "  in  England,  so 
that  "  we  now  hear  no  more  of  them."  He  found  comfort  in 
the  reflexion  that  these  books 

^'  which,  from  their  novelty  and  from  the  position  of  their 
author,  made  at  first  some  stir,  have  in  fact  sunk  into 
oblivion" 

He  here  allows  them  at  least  the  merit  of  novelty.  He 
had  denied  it  to  them  before.  The  main  contention  of  the 
so-called  Capetown  trial  had  been  that  the  Bishop's  criticisms 
were  a  farrago  of  old  and  worthless  objections  which  had 
been  met  and  answered  a  thousand  times.  But  to  write  such 
books  as  those  which  Bishop  Colenso  wrote  was  in  Bishop 
Gray's  opinion  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world. 

"  It  costs  little,"  he  said,  "to  start  an  objection, — to  make  an 
assertion  or  a  denial  ;  but  it  might  require  a  volume  to 
refute  objections  and  establish  the  truth  of  an  asserted 
position  ;  and  who  has  the  time  for  writing  such  books,  or 
who  would  purchase  them  and  devote  days  and  weeks  to 
lengthy  discussions  on  the  details  of  a  thousand  difficult 
questions .'' "  ^ 

^'  No  one,  surely,"  are  the  Bishop's  dignified  words  of  repl}-, 
"  but  he  who  believes  that  he  is  serving  God  faithfully,  by 
using  diligently  the  means  which  may  have  been  at  his  dis- 
posal for  ascertaining,  as  far  as  possible,  the  truth  of '  those 
things  in  which  he  has  been  instructed';  no  one  but  he  who 
knows  that  he  must  '  buy  the  truth '  at  all  costs  of  toil 
of  body  or  mind,  of  worldly  loss,  it  may  be,  and  of  anxiety 
and  reproach  ;  ...  no   one  but  he  who,  in  dependence  on 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  xvi. 


624  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xir. 

Divine  support,  is  prepared,  if  need  be,  to  make  the  sacri- 
fices which  the  highest  law  of  his  being  demands." 

The  fact  is  that  the  sacerdotal  crusaders,  who  were  resolved 
on  trampling  him  down,  were  ready  to  take  up  any  cry  which 
might  answer  their  purpose.  When  the  first  Parts  of  the 
Examination  of  the  Pentateuch  came  out,  it  pleased  Bishop 
Wilberforce  to  treat  their  contents  as  merely  "  speculations," 
and  to  characterise  them  as  both  "  rash  and  feeble."  Later 
on  he  declared  that 

"  the  ever-changing  play  of  life  gives  such  new  colour  to  old 
difficulties,  that  old  answers  will  no  more  meet  new  objections 
than  old  firearms  will  suit  modern  battles."^ 

But  the  Bishop  of  Natal's  orthodox  antagonists  felt  and  said 
that  whatever  difficulties  might  be  involved  in  the  arrange- 
ment or  even  in  some  of  the  statements  of  the  Pentateuch, 
they  could  fall  back  on  an  impregnable  fortress  in  the  historical 
and  prophetical  books  of  the  Old  Testament.  To  these  books 
accordingly,  in  the  concluding  Parts,  the  Bishop  more  espe- 
cially applied  himself ;  the  result  being  that  these  books  are 
shown  to  form  a  vast  storehouse  of  evidence  proving  that 
when  most  of  them  were  written  the  Levitical  legislation  was 
not  yet  in  existence.  The  chronicler,  indeed,  stands  self- 
refuted.  Dr.  Irons  with  sufficient  self-assurance  insisted  that 
"  the  sacred  author  of  the  Chronicles  "  repudiated  the  notion 
that  he  was  writing  history,  and  declared  that  they  who  sought 
mere  history  must  look  for  it  elsewhere.  No  supposition  could 
be  more  groundless.  His  work  is,  for  the  most  part,  a  histoiy 
of  the  driest  kind  ;  and  if  it  be  not  a  history,  it  is  nothing. 
It  is,  however,  history  hatched  in  the  writer's  brain,  and  put 
forth  to  further  a  particular  cause  which  could  not  be  furthered 
otherwise, — in  plain  English,  to  deceive.  There  is  no  use  in 
attempting  to  shut  our  eyes  to  this  fact. 

^  Pentateuch^  Part  VI.  p.  xxii. 


1 87 1  -79-  THE  PENT  A  TE  UCH :    ITS  GRO  WTH.  62  5 

"  With  the  Books  of  Samuel  and  Kings  before  him,"  says  the 
Bishop,  "  he  cannot  be  freed  from  the  great  crime  of  dehber- 
ately  falsifying  parts  of  history,  except  by  supposing  that 
he  did  not  beHeve  them  to  be  facts,  while  no  reason  can  be 
assigned  for  this  disbelief,  except  that  he  did  not  choose  to 
believe  them."  ^ 

The  chronicler  belongs  to  a  very  late  day  indeed,  to  a  time 
not  very  long  preceding  the  Christian  era  ;  and  the  Levitical 
legislation,  which  it  is  his  whole  aim  to  inforce,  was  put 
together  when  the  stream  of  living  prophecy  had  well-nigh 
ceased  to  flow.  The  quenching  of  the  prophetical  spirit  after 
the  Captivity  is  "  a  patent  peculiarity  of  Jewish  history  ; " 
but  the  whole  course  of  the  post-exilic  history  renders  this 
fact 

"  intelligible  and  highly  instructive,  instead  of  its  being,  as  it 
used  to  appear,  while  it  was  supposed  that  the  Levitical 
system  had  all  along  co-existed  with  the  prophets,  an 
unaccountable  mystery."  ^ 

A  generation  or  two  may  yet  pass  before  the  traditionalists 
are  compelled  to  admit  this  explanation  ;  but  it  is  more  likely 
that  the  acknowledgement  will  come  much  sooner.  The  free 
utterance  of  the  Divine  Spirit  was,  the  Bishop  adds,  stifled 
beneath  the  mass  of  minute  ritualism  imposed  by  the  later 
legislators  in  the  name  of  God. 

In  making'  this  assault  on  the  supposed  authority  of  "  the 
Church"  the  Bishop  was  indeed  doing  the  most  important 
part  of  his  work.  He  was  proving  that  the  true  history  of  the 
Jewish  people  might  be  most  clearly  and  effectually  traced, 
but  that  this  could  be  done  only  by  reversing  the  notions 
drawn  from  the  traditionary  systems  of  interpretation.  The 
greatness  of  this  work  it  would  not  be  easy  to  exaggerate, 
although,  in  the  first  exuberance   of  his  animosity,  Bishop 

^  Pentateiieh^  Part  VI.  p.  xxviii.  '-^  lb.  p.  x\ix. 

VOL.  I.  S  S 


626  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

Wilberforce  had  affected  to  dismiss  it  as  "  in  all  essential 
points  but  the  repetition  of  old  and  often-answered  cavils." 
Such,  emphatically,  was  not  the  opinion  of  the  most  eminent 
among  the  Continental  scholars  and  critics.  Speaking  of  the 
views  prevailing  in  Germany,  Professor  Kuenen  said  with 
justice  that,  when  men  like  Ewald,  Bunsen,  Bleek,  and  Knobel 
had  one  by  one  been  brought  by  the  English  Bishop  to  the 
necessity  of  revising  their  theories,  there  was  "  no  reason 
truly  for  calling  his  method  antiquated,  or  his  reflexions 
obsolete."  Kuenen's  judgement  is,  indeed,  in  its  gravity  and 
its  power,  one  which  in  mere  fairness  to  the  Bishop  cannot 
be  suppressed.  Having  admitted  that  the  first  effect  of  the 
Bishop's  criticisms  w^as  to  show  the  unhistorical  character  of 
the  Pentateuch,  by  showing  that  its  narratives  contradicted 
the  general  laws  of  time  and  space  to  which  every  fact  is 
subject,  he  further  allowed  that  the  questions  thus  raised  were 
not  to  be  settled  by  any  suppositions  that  the  accounts  about 
the  Mosaic  time  were  only  exaggerations  of  half-historical 
legends.     His  method,  in  fact, 

"showed  that  just  exactly  those  notices  were  the  most  un- 
historical which  professed  to  be  authentic  documents,  and 
were  distinguished,  to  all  appearance,  b}'  the  greatest 
accuracy.  In  other  words,  it  is  just  the  narrative  of  the 
'  Grundschrift,'  or  Book  of  Origins,  which  appeared  least 
able  to  withstand  such  a  criticism  as  his.  This  is  the  more 
remarkable,  inasmuch  as  Colenso,  in  producing  his  diffi- 
culties, took  no  account  whatever  of  the  distinction  of 
different  documents.  He  was  engaged  exclusively  with 
the  ansvv^er  to  the  question  whether  the  representation  which 
the  Pentateuch  gives  us  agreed  with  the  demands  of  reality  ; 
and  lo  !  it  is  just  the  '  Grundschrift'  in  which  he  finds  them 

\i.e.  the  difficulties] The  prevailing  view  as  to  the 

origin  of  the  Pentateuch  had  not  prepared  us  for  this  :  in 
the  oldest  document  we  expected  to  find  the  truest  copy  of 
the  reality.     But,  more  than  this,  how  is  Colenso's  result  to 


1 8;  1-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  627 


be  reconciled  with  the  form  of  the  notices  of  the 
'  Grundschrift '  ?  When  I  read  that  the  Israehtes  numbered 
600,000  warriors,  and  it  appears  afterwards  that  this 
number  must  be  exaggerated,  I  set  this  datum  to  the 
account  of  the  embellishing  and  hyperbolical  legend.  But 
when  there  are  laid  before  me  two  lists  of  musterings,  as  in 
Numbers  i.  and  xxvi.,  which  define  accurately  the  numbers 
of  each  separate  tribe,  and  at  the  end  give  nearly  the  same 
sum-totals,  then  the  state  of  the  question  is  entirely 
changed.  Then  I  must  choose  between  one  of  two  things. 
Either  my  difficulties  must  disappear  before  the  prime- 
document  which  lies  before  me  ;  or,  if  this  cannot  be,  then 
I  must  deny  that  it  is  a  prime-document,  and  must  call  it 
by  its  proper  name,  a  fiction. 
"  There  is  no  third  course  possible.  Well,  then,  Colenso's 
criticism  places  us  right  in  front  of  this  dilemma.  He  him- 
self does  not  feel  what,  as  a  legitimate  consequence,  follows 
from  his  demonstration  :  in  the  subsequent  parts  of  his 
work  he  subjects  himself,  as  far  as  regards  the  age  and 
character  of  the  '  Grundschrift,'  to  the  prevailing  view.  But 
so  much  the  greater  impression  does  his  criticism  make 
upon  the  attentive  reader  who  is  able  to  judge  the  weight 
of  his  arguments.  So,  at  all  events,  has  it  been  with  me. 
I  had  myself  formerly  noticed  some  of  the  difficulties 
presented  by  him.  But,  as  they  are  here  put  together  and 
set  forth  with  imperturbable  calmness,  they  gave  me  at  once  a 
presentiment,  and  brought  me  by  degrees  to  the  conviction, 
that  our  criticism  of  the  '  Grundschrift '  had  stopped  short 
half-way,  and,  in  order  to  reach  its  end,  must  go  through 
with  its  work."  ^ 

The  attempt  to  analyse  the  enormous  amount  of  materials 
sifted  and  tested  by  the  Bishop  in  these  concluding  volumes 
would  be  a  futile  task.  Nothing  less  than  a  careful  and 
thorough  scrutinising  of  the  whole  can  possibly  bring  home 
to  the  reader  the  full  force  of  the  evidence  on  which  his  con- 

1  Pentateuch.,  Part  VI.  p.  xxxii. 

S  S  2 


.628  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

elusions  are  in  every  instance  based.  But,  without  going  at 
length  into  details,  we  may  follow  him  through  the  several 
stages  of  the  inquiry,  and  convince  ourselves  that  the  tradi- 
tional notions  regarding  almost  every  portion  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  are  at  least  as  far  removed  from  the  facts  as  is  the 
Ptolemaic  astronomy  from  the  actual  movements  and 
relations  of  the  heavenly  bodies  in  the  Kosmos. 

The  very  surprising  likeness  in  style  and  language  between 
the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  and  the  prophecies  of  Jeremiah 
threw  a  wonderful  light  on  the  alleged  discovery  of  the  Book 
of  the  Law  in  the  Temple,  and  rendered  it  in  a  high  degree 
likely  that  Jeremiah  was  the  author  of  at  least  one  of  the  books 
of  the  Pentateuch.  But  the  same  likeness  may  be  seen  between 
other  books.  Ezekiel  lived  in  the  same  age  and  moved  in 
the  same  circle  with  Jeremiah.^  It  was  therefore  to  be  ex- 
pected that  the  styles  of  the  two  would  exhibit  certain  points 
of  resemblance  ;  and  this  is,  indeed,  the  case.  But  Ezekiel 
was  by  no  means  a  servile  imitator  of  the  Deuteronomist ; 
and 

"  a  careful  analysis  of  Leviticus  xxvi.  shows  that  almost  every 
peculiar  expression  in  this  chapter  finds  either  its  counter- 
part, or  even  its  exact  parallel,  in  Ezekiel  ;  while  many  of 
these  occur  nozvhere  else  in  the  whole  Bible,  and  others  are 
found  nowhere  else  in  the  Pentateuch."  ^ 

The  reader  who  will  examine  the  list  of  those  parallelisms 
given  by  the  Bishop  will  see  that  they  are  of  a  most  remark- 
able kind.  What  inference  can  be  drawn  except  that  the 
prophet  Ezekiel  is  the  writer  of  this  chapter  in  Leviticus  ? 

"It  is  surely,"  he  argues,  "extravagant  to  suppose  that  a 
writer  so  profuse  and  so  peculiar,  as  this  prophet  is  acknow- 
ledged to  be,  should  have  studied  so  very  closely  this 
particular  chapter  of  Leviticus,  out  of  the  Pentateuch,  as  to 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  3.  -  lb.  p.  5. 


1 87 1-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  629 

have  become  thoroughly  imbued  with  its  style  and  fami- 
liarised with  its  expressions, — so  thoroughly  indeed  as  to 
have  actually  adopted  nearly  fifty  of  them  as  his  own,  of 
which  eighteen,  at  least,  occur  nowhere  else  in  the  Bible."  ^ 

A  further  examination  shows  that  other  portions  of  Leviticus 
are  due  to  the  same  hand,  or,  at  least,  to  writers  of  the  same 
age  and  in  close  connexion  with  Ezekiel ;  -  and  of  these 
passages,  Graf  (a  writer  whom  the  Bishop  never  names  with- 
out an  expression  of  high  respect,  and  whose  early  death  he 
deplored  as  a  very  serious  loss  to  the  world  of  modern, 
thought)  declared  that  the  points  of  likeness  so  laid  bare 
could  not  be  accidental,  but  must  lead  "  necessarily  to  the 
assumption  that  Ezekiel  himself  was  the  writer,"  as  otherwise 
we  must  infer 

"  that  a  writer,  who  is  so  peculiar  throughout,  has  adopted  the 
style  of  these  sections,  or  rather  of  one  single  chapter  only, 
to  such  an  extent  that  he  reflects  this  style  in  the  whole  of 
his  long  work,  without  being  for  a  single  moment  untrue  to. 
himself."  3 

But,  if  this  inference  be  admitted,  the  further  conclusion  is 
found  to  follow, 

*'  viz. :  that  the  whole  of  the  priestly  legislation  of  Leviticus  and 
Numbers,  together  with  the  description  in  Exodus  of  the 
construction  of  the  ark  and  tabernacle,  &c.,  has  been 
written  either  in  Ezekiel's  time  or  after  it ;  that  is,  during  or 
after  the  Captivity."  ^ 

This  conclusion  is  without  any  reservation  maintained  by 
Dr.  Kalisch,  a  Jewish  scholar  and  critic  whose  authority  on 
all  questions  relating  to  the  literature  of  his  own  people 
stands  pre-eminent.  The  Book  of  Leviticus,  Dr.  Kalisch 
asserts,  c^x^VloX.  possibly  be  the  work  of  one  author  and  of  one 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  9.  ^  lb.  p.  11. 

2  lb.  p.  15.  ^  lb.  p.  16, 


630  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

age,  but  is  composed  of  various  portions,  written,  enlarged,  and 
modified  by  different  authors,  in  harmony  with  the  necessities 
and  altered  conditions  of  their  respective  times.  Still  more 
pertinently,  Dr.  Kalisch  adds, — 

"  The  question  then  arises — Did  Moses  lay  down  any  distinct 
laws  for  public  worship  .''  And  if  so,  are  the  precepts  im- 
bodied  in  the  three  middle  books  of  the  Pentateuch  traceable 
to  his  authority  .-*  It  is  difficult  to  reply  categorically  to  the 
first  point :  history  gives  an  unequivocal  denial  X.o  the  second. 
It  proves  that  many  centuries  after  Moses  the  Levitical 
ordinances  were  neither  practised  nor  known." 

It  is,  indeed,  abundantly  clear  that,  so  long  as  the  tradi- 
tional notions  of  the  early  origin  of  the  Levitical  law  are 
retained, 

"the  whole  history  of  Israel  must  be  confused  and  contra- 
dictory ;  and  clearly  it  will  be  impossible  to  reconstruct 
that  history  with  any  confidence  until  it  is  decided  whether 
the  Levitical  legislation  dates  from  the  time  of  the  Exodus 
or  not, — whether,  in  short,  it  is  to  be  ranked  amongst  the 

earliest,  or  amongst  the  latest,  portions  of  the  Bible 

In  the  one  case  we  shall  have,  as  in  other  nations,  an  orderly 
progress,  the  people  making  gradual  advancement  in  religion 
and  morals,  ....  and  their  history  will  now  become 
rational  and  intelligible,  being  stripped,  not  of  all  that  is 
supernatural  and  Divine,  but  of  all  that  is  miraculous,  per- 
plexing, and  contradictory.  In  the  other  case  it  will  be  full 
of  marvels  and  prodigies,  profusely  lavished  on  a  favoured 
people  or  individual,  performed  oftentimes  ....  without 
any  adequate  object  or  any  proportionate  results,  as  when 
....  the  sun  and  moon  stood  still  to  allow  of  Joshua's 
slaughtering  more  of  the  Amorites,  when,  after  all,  we  are 
told,  '  there  were  more  which  died  zcith  Jiailstones  than  they 
whom  the  children  of  Israel  slew  with  the  sword.'  "  ^ 

1  re7itatcitch,  Part  VI.  p.  iS. 


1871-79.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  631 

Either,  then,  the  institutions  and  practice  of  the  Levitical 
law  originated  in  the  time  of  Moses,  or  they  did  not.  If  they 
did,  how  are  we  to  explain  the  fact  that  we  find  not  a  trace 
of  these  laws  being  observed  or  existing  either  in  the  more 
authentic  history  or  in  the  pre-Captivity  prophets  ?  We  find, 
indeed,  full-blown  stories  of  their  observance  in  the  Books  of 
Chronicles  ;  but  we  may,  even  at  starting,  take  the  Bishop's 
word   for  it  that  the  Chronicles 

"  are  utterly  untrustworthy  in  respect  of  matters  of  historical 
fact,  when  not  supported  by  other  evidence,  and  were 
written  long  after  the  Captivity,  when  we  find  Dr.  Kalisch 
maintaining  that  they  are  certainly  the  work  of  one  author 
because  they  disclose  throughout  the  same  systematic  re- 
arrangement of  history,  and  that  this  author  deserves  no 
authority  whatever,  as  a  source  of  history,  at  least  on 
points  connected  with  public  worship."^ 

But  this  systematic  rearrangement  of  old  materials  ought 
surely  to  teach  us  a  conclusive  lesson  as  to  the  power  of 
the  historical  sense  in  the  Jewish  people  as  a  whole.  We 
need  say  this  with  no  invidious  meaning.  Greeks  and  Romans 
may  not  have  been,  and  probably  were  not,  much  better.  But 
this  much  at  least  such  facts  must  make  clear  to  us,  that 
nothing  which  earlier  writers  had  set  down  was  sacred  in  the 
eyes  of  those  who  came  after  them.  Nothing  that  they  said 
or  could  say  was  invested  with  such  authority  as  to  make 
others  hesitate  before  they  tampered  with  it.  Thus  the 
Deuteronomist  was  certainly  acquainted  with  the  main  narra- 
tive of  the  Book  of  Exodus.  In  his  own  book,  after  describing 
his  descent  from  the  mount  with  the  two  tables  of  stone  which 
he  broke  when  he  saw  the  people's  idolatry,  he  goes  on  to  say 
that  Moses  fell  down  as  at  the  first  forty  days  and  nights, 
neither  eating  bread  nor  drinking  water  ;  that  Jehovah  desired 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  20. 


633  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

to  destroy  Aaron,  and  that  Moses  prayed  for  Aaron  at  the 
same  time  ;  and  again  after  speaking  of  their  rebelUons  at 
Taberah,  &c.,  he  apparently  repeats  the  same  account  of  the 
fasting  and  intercession  of  Moses. 

"  But  not  a  word  is  said  in  Exodus  xxxii.  about  this  fasting 
after  his  descent  for  forty  days  and  forty  nights,  or  about 
Moses  praying  for  Aaron  at  the  same  time.  On  the  con- 
trary, Moses  in  Exodus  xxxii.  merely  reproaches  Aaron, 
and  he  intercedes  for  the  people  before  he  comes  down 
from  the  mount,  and  Jehovah  was  pacified.  .  .  .  But  this 
very  statement  again  is  contradictory  to  the  account  which 
follows."  1 

If,  however,  these  contradictions  show  how  little  the 
Deuteronomist  thought  of,  or  cared  for,  the  authority  of  the 
earlier  record,  it  is  clear  that  in  this  earlier  record  there  arc 
now  statements  and  narratives  of  which  the  Deuteronomist 
w  as  altogether  ignorant  ;  and  it  follows  that  these  passages 

"  cannot  have  existed  at  all  in  that  older  document  which  he 
had  before  him."  - 

In  fact,  we  have  proof  here  that  these  passages  cannot  have 
been  written  before  the  Captivity ;  and  this  proof  is  only  a 
portion  of  that  mass  of  cumulative  evidence  which  shows  that 
the  Levitical  laws  form  the  latest  portion  of  the  Pentateuch. 
Thus  to  the  splendid  Tabernacle  of  Bezaleel  the  Deuteronomist 
makes  not  even  the  faintest  allusion.^  But  according  to  Mr. 
Ferguson  the  measurements  of  the  Tabernacle  are  exactly 
half  of  those  laid  down  as  the  dimensions  of  the  Temple  of 
Solomon  ;  and  from  the  previous  fact  the  inference  preciscl}- 
contradicts  Mr.  Ferguson's  conclusion.  Me  thinks  that  the 
Temple  was  copied  from  the  Tabernacle :  in  reality  the 
measurements  of  the   latter  were  suggested  by  those  of  the 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  \'I.  p.  37.  -  /^.  p.  41.  "  lb.  p.  50. 


I87I-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  GROWTH.  633 

former,  and  the  description  was  framed  deliberately,  far  away 
in  the  land  of  exile,  along  with  the  details  of  all  the  ecclesi- 
astical system,^  which  there  was  no  doubt  a  full  intention  of 
carrying  out  on  their  return  from  captivity.^  It  was  indeed 
by  no  means  impossible  to  carry  them  out  within  the  narrow 
limits  of  the  restored  settlement,  in  which  there  seems  to 
have  been  one  priest  to  every  ten  laymen.^  But  without  going 
further  we  see  that  the  ecclesiastical  or  church  history  of  the 
Jews  runs  in  very  different  channels  at  different  times,  and  that 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  as  presented  to  us,  are  on  this  subject, 
as  on  most  others,  self-contradictory,  until  we  determine  the 
order  in  which  they  were  written,  and  then  the  true  course  of 
events  becomes  clear  enough.  The  Levites  and  priests  of 
the  Book  of  Judges  are  despised  and  homeless  outcasts  and 
wanderers  ;  in  the  pages  of  the  Chronicles,  they  are  exalted 
to  a  dignity  loftier  than  that  of  the  priesthood  of  Latin 
Christendom,  their  office  being  fenced  round  by  terrible 
sanctions — "  he  that  cometh  near  shall  be  put  to  death."  The 
history  of  the  Jewish  kings  shows  that  this  separation  from 
the  rest  of  the  people  is  of  later  growth. 

"  If  such  ideas,"  says  the  Bishop,  "  had  prevailed  in  Israel  in 
earlier  times,  we  may  be  sure  that  David,  and  Solomon  in 
his  best  days,  would  not  have  intruded  on  the  priestly  office, 
as  the  history  represents  them  repeatedly  as  doing,  without 
a  word  of  reproof  either  from  the  historian  himself,  or  from 
the  prophets  or  priests  around  them.  Least  of  all  can  it  be 
imagined  that  Aaron,  who  was  really  the  chief  offender  in 
the  affair  of  the  golden  calf,  should  have  been  rewarded 
with  such  distinguishing  pre-eminence  as  the  later  portion 
of  the  Pentateuch  assigns  to  him.  Nor,  indeed,  is  there  any 
sign  that  in  the  original  story  Aaron  officiated  as  a  priest  at 
all.  To  the  end  he  seems  to  have  continued  merely  to  act 
as  an  adviser,  friend,  and  prophet,  and,  in  his  chiefs  absence, 
the  principal  substitute  for  Moses."  ♦ 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  51.         -  lb.  p.  60.        -^  Id.  p.  61.        *  lb.  p.  110. 


634  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  CO  LENS  O.  chap.  xii. 


But  it  is  not  merely  with  reference  to  the  priests  and  Levites 
that  the  analysis  of  the  Pentateuch  reverses  practically  the 
notions  of  all  traditional  schools  of  interpreters.  It  strikes  at 
the  root  of  the  commonly  received  ideas  as  to  what  is  supposed 
to  be  the  earliest  moral  legislation.  The  Decalogue  in  its 
present  form,  instead  of  having  been  delivered  amid  the 
thunders  and  lightnings  of  Sinai,  was  unknown  to  any  age 
preceding  that  of  Josiah.  The  passage  in  Exodus  which 
contains  the  Ten  Commandments  is  an  insertion  of  the 
Deutcronomist.^ 

Assuming,  as  the  traditionary  view  does,  that  this  passage 
belongs  to  the  original  record, 

"  we  should,"  the  Bishop  insists,  "  have  to  suppose  that  Moses, 
having  heard  from  the  Divine  mouth,  in  the  third  month 
of  the  Exodus,  such  phrases  as  '  house  of  servants,'  '  the 
stranger  that  is  within  thy  gates,'  '  in  order  that  thy  days 
may  be  prolonged  on  the  ground,'  '  the  ground  which  thy 
Elohim  is  giving  thee,'  with  other  like  phrases,  never 
employed  any  one  of  them  again  in  his  other  writings, 
or  in  the  words  ascribed  to  Jehovah,  until,  in  his  last 
address,  nearly  forty  years  afterwards,  he  begins  suddenly 
to  use  them  all  freel}-  in  Deuteronomy."- 

The  supposition  is  incredible  ;  but  the  consequences  of 
rejecting  it  are  far-reaching.  Whatever  may  have  been  the 
historical  sense  or  conscience  of  the  Deuteronomist,  the  fact 
remains  that  the  ten  precepts  in  the  Book  of  Exodus  are  his 
handiwork.  That  the  writer  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  is 
the  writer  also  of  this  passage  in  Exodus  there  can  be  no 
question  ;  but  it  is  quite  possible  or  likely,  as  the  Bishop 
suggests,  that  he  may  have  inserted  this  passage 

*'  when  he  revised  and  enlarged  the  original  story,  and  before 
he  decided  to  write  the  address  of  Moses  in  Deuteronomy." 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  147.  -  lb.  p.  148. 


1871-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  635 

Admitting  these  facts,  we  can  have  no  difficulty  in 
understanding 

^'how  in  that  address  he  could  venture  to  modify  so  re- 
markably as  he  has  done  the  language  of  the  Fourth 
Commandment,  which  is  incomprehensible  on  the  tradi- 
tionary view,  or  even  on  the  supposition  that  he  regarded 
this  section  as  a  venerable  record  of  an  older  legislation." 

In  fact,  in  modifying  the  precept  he  was  doing  nothing 

'■'■  more  than  modifying  his  own  work  ;  but  if  we  turn  to  what 
is  really  the  older  narrative  in  Exodus,  we  find  that  not  a 
word  is  said  about  the  people  at  Sinai  having  heard  the 
Ten  Commandments,  nor  is  there  the  slightest  reference 
to  their  having  heard  them  in  the  chapters  that  follow."  ^ 

If,  again,  there  be  one  point  more  than  another  on  which 
stress  is  laid  by  what  is  generally  supposed  to  be  the  Mosaic 
lawgiver,  it  is  the  duty  of  all  the  males  of  the  Jewish  people 
to  go  up  yearly,  for  the  three  great  feasts,  to  Jerusalem.  The 
historical  books  furnish  not  the  slightest  warrant  for  the 
notion  that  such  a  command  was  known  in  the  times  of  the 
earlier  kings,  or  was  then  in  existence. 

^'  In  the  age  of  Solomon,  for  instance,  the  wide  range  of  his 
territories  made  it  simply  impossible  for  the  more  distant 
tribes  to  present  themselves  at  Jerusalem,  for  the  purpose  of 
keeping  the  feast  of  Mazzoth  (Passover)  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  rainy  season,  and  just  before  the  beginning  of  barley 
harvest.  .  .  .  Thus  just  before  the  commencement  of  the 
season  of  harvest,  all  the  males,  if  this  law  had  been  in 
operation  in  Solomon's  time,  would  be  asked  to  travel  up 
to  Jerusalem  at  one  extremity  of  the  kingdom — chiefly,  we 
must  suppose,  on  foot — a  distance  of  more  than  a  hundred 
miles  from  the  more  distant  places,  whose  inhabitants 
would  therefore  consume  the  greater  part  of  a  week  on 
the  journey  each  way."  " 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  149.  -  lb.  p.  174. 


636  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

In  other  words,  to  attend  these  three  festivals  they  must 
spend  some  six  weeks  yearly  on  the  road.  How,  again,  could 
the  males  of  the  trans-Jordanic  tribes  attend  at  this  season  at 
Jerusalem,  since  that  river,  we  are  told,  overflows  all  its  banks 
at  the  time  of  harvest .''  It  is  true  that  when  David  fled  from 
Absalom  a  ferry-boat  carried  over  his  household. 

"  But  how  little,"  the  Bishop  asks,  "  could  this  have  availed  for 
the  120,000  warriors,  who,  according  to  the  chronicler, 
lived  in  those  days  in  the  country  under  his  rule  beyond 
the  Jordan,  or  for  a  much  more  moderate  estimate  of  its 
male  inhabitants  .-* " 

In  short,  the  Bishop  adds,  and  he  is  most  fully  justified  in 
adding  it, 

"  it  is  incredible  that  a  law  could  be  laid  down  by  any  sane 
person, — not  to  speak  of  the  Divine  Wisdom, — which  re- 
quired the  attendance  at  Jerusalem  of  all  the  males  from  all 
parts  of  the  land  east  and  west  of  the  Jordan,  on  a  certain 
precise  day  at  the  time  of  the  Passover,  on  pain  of  death."  ^ 

In  subsequent  chapters  the  Bishop  gives  the  original  story 
as  it  is  found  in  the  Book  of  Exodus,  in  Numbers  and  Deu- 
teronomy, and  in  Joshua,  so  that  nothing  remains  beyond  the 
later  legislation,  which  has  thrust  itself  chiefly  into  the  Books 
of  Leviticus  and  Numbers.  For  the  student  who  is  anxious 
only  to  get  at  the  truth,  this  restoration  of  the  earliest  narra- 
tive is  an  immense  boon.  Ever}'  part  of  it  is  full  of  instruc- 
tion ;  but  perhaps  the  most  important  remark  relates  to  the 
period  of  forty  years  assigned  to  the  wanderings  in  the  wilder- 
ness. Of  these  wanderings  the  original  story  takes  no  notice. 
The  first  mention  of  them  comes  from  the  Deuteronomist, 
who  speaks  of  their  journeyings  from  the  days  of  their  leaving 
Kadesh-barnea  to  the  passage  of  the  brook  Zered  as  extend- 
ing over  thirty-eight  years.  But  where  did  he  obtain  this 
^Pentateuch,  Part  \'I.  p.  177. 


1 87 1-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  637 

datum  of  forty  years  ?  Not  from  any  passage  in  the  original 
story,  for  while  the  Book  of  Numbers  (xiv.  22,  23)  declares 
that  they  who  came  out  of  Egypt  should  not  see  the  land 
promised  to  their  forefathers,  it  says  nothing  about  a  term  of 
forty  years,  and  though  this  story  may  have  involved  the  idea 
of  some  additional  wandering,  it  did  not  seemingly  contem- 
plate a  very  long  interval  spent  in  this  way.^  Upon  the  whole, 
the  Bishop  concludes  that  the  Deuteronomist  himself  imported 
into  the  story  the  exact  number  of  forty  years,  which  he  is  so 
careful  to  define  by  means  of  the  datum  of  thirty-eight  years 
in  ii.  14,  and  the  first  day  of  the  eleventh  month  of  the  fortieth 
year  in  i.  3.  It  follows  that  the  original  story  did  not  contain 
this  datum  of  forty  years, 

"  and  intended  no  more  than  that  the  people  should  be 
punished  by  having  to  go  down  to  the  Red  Sea  once  more, 
and  make  the  circuit  of  Mount  Seir  so  as  to  cross  the 
Jordan,  instead  of  making  directly  from  Kadesh  into  the 
south  of  Canaan,  as  was  at  first  proposed  ;  and  this  would 
have  been  a  severe  punishment,  since  even  the  eleven  days' 
march  from  Sinai  to  Kadesh  is  spoken  of  as  a  '  going  through 
that  great  and  terrible  wilderness '  ;  where  they  had  seen 
how  Jehovah  their  Elohim  bore  them  as  a  man  doth  bear 

his  son But  for  the  circuit  of  Mount  Seir  only  a 

comparatively  short  time  would  be  required  ; "  ^ 

and  during  this  time  Moses  might  well  be  supposed  to  prepare 
Joshua  for  his  future  duties. 

The  extension  of  the  wanderings  for  some  short  time  led  to 
the  choice  of  the  favourite  number  of  forty  years  ;  but  even 
when  that  number  was  chosen,  there  is  no  indication  in  Deu- 
teronomy viii.  that  this  period  was  a  time  of  punishment, 
during  which  every  man  of  a  whole  generation  was  to  be 
cut  off. 

^  Pentatetieh,  Part  VI.  p.  232.  ^  lb.  p.  370. 


638  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

*'  The  idea  of  such  a  doom  seems  not  yet  to  have  germinated 
in  the  writer's  mind  when  he  composed  this  address."  ^ 

If  we  take  the  doom  to  mean  that  those  who  left  Egypt  as 
fathers  of  families  should  not  enter  the  promised  land,  this 
was  only  saying  that  they  should  live  out  the  usual  term  of 
human  life  in  the  wilderness  ;  and  the  discomforts  of  this  time 
were  to  be  lightened  by  a  series  of  marvellous  incidents  or 
dispensations  which  should  prevent  their  shoes  from  wearing 
out  or  their  feet  from  swelling.  The  suggestions  thus  made 
might  be  worked  out  to  any  extent,  but  on  examination  we 
find  that  we  are  dealing  with  mere  amplifications  or  embel- 
lishments. According  to  the  narrative  in  Numbers  (xxxiii.) 
they  made  in  the  thirty-eight  years  only  forty-two  stations, 
which  after  all  cannot  have  been  far  distant  from  each  other  ; 
and  as 

"  they  must  have  stayed  on  the  average  about  a  year  at  least 
at  each  of  them,  there  would  have  been  little  occasion  for 
their  foot  swelling."  - 

If  the  more  bulky  volumes  in  which  the  Bishop  brought 
his  examination  to  a  close  had  answered  no  other  purpose 
than  that  of  bringing  to  light  the  mighty  mass  of  exaggera- 
tion Avith  which  the  Jewish  history  is  overloaded,  the  toil 
bestowed  upon  them  would  not  have  been  wasted.  We  have 
seen  already  some  of  the  difficulties  involved  in  the  story  of 
the  600,000  Hebrew  warriors  at  Sinai  ;  but  what  are  these  as 
compared  with  the  gigantic  hyperbole  of  the  seven  nations  of 
Canaan,  each  "greater  and  mightier"  than  the  Hebrews,  who 
were  to  be  conquered  or  driven  out  of  the  promised  land  .'* 
The  Jewish  warriors  represented  a  population  of  about  three 
millions  ;  the  seven  mightier  Canaanitish  nations  would  there- 
fore furnish  a  population  of  some  thirty  millions  at  least,  all 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  \\.  p.  3S3.  2  //,  p  384 


1 87 1 -79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  GROWTH.  639 

included  within  the  hmits  reached  by  the  kingdom  of  David 
and  Solomon.  The  extent  of  this  empire  Von  Raumer 
reckons  as  500  square  miles.     On  this  Kuenen  remarks  : — 

"  Adopting  this  last  estimate,  which  is  certainly  excessive,  and 
assuming  further  that  Palestine  belonged  to  the  lands 
most  thickly  peopled,  and  therefore  had  6,000  inhabitants 
for  each  square  mile,  we  do  not  reach  a  higher  population 
than  3,000,000  souls."  ^ 

We  may  allow,  further  (what  is,  to  say  the  least,  unlikely), 
that  the  population  of  Canaan  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus  was 
as  great  as  it  was  in  the  time  of  David.  Still,  this  aggregate 
of  3,000,000  was  made  up  of  seven  nations,  greater  and 
mightier  than  Israel,  and  thus  we  are  brought  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  whole  Hebrew  people  at  the  time  of  the 
conquest  cannot  possibly  have  been  much  above  400,000,  and 
could  not  have  furnished  more  than  80,000  warriors.  In 
other  words,  the  history  is  untrustworthy  from  beginning 
to  end. 

We  are  compelled,  therefore,  to  test  every  portion  of  the 
narrative.  We  have  seen  that  the  account  of  the  institution 
of  the  Passover  is  riddled  with  inconsistencies  ;  and  we  have 
been  brought  face  to  face  with  the  crowning  difficulty  that  the 
Levitical  or  Mosaic  prescriptions  with  reference  to  it  were 
never  carried  out  before  the  time  of  Josiah,  or  rather  before 
the  time  of  the  Captivity,  and  that  they  were  not  carried  out 
for  the  simple  reason  that  they  were  unknown.  It  is  quite 
clear,  therefore,  that  the  origin  of  this  festival,  as  given  in  the 
Book  of  Exodus,  is  not  to  be  taken  as  historical  fact ;  and  if 
it  cannot  be  so  taken,  then  how,  actually,  did  it  originate  t 
In  one  point  at  least  the  story  is  clear,  that  the  feast  was 
connected  with  the  destruction  of  first-born  children,  as  well  as 
of  the  first-borns  of  flocks  and  herds  ;  and  the  track  thus 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  383. 


640  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

indicated  must  be  followed,  if  we  would  reach  any  sound 
conclusions  on  the  subject.  To  this  inquiry  the  Bishop 
devotes  himself  in  the  twentieth  chapter  of  his  Sixth  Part, 
laying  special  stress  on  the  fact  that  tJie  pre- Captivity  prophets 
never  make  mention  of  this  festival.  Having  first  shown  that 
the  name  Pesach  (Pascha),  or  Passover,  is  connected  with  the 
feast  of  Mazzoth,^  and  denotes  the  special  sacrifice  belonging 
to  that  feast  (the  sacrifice  of  firstlings,  not  of  brute  animals 
only,  but  also  of  men),  he  remarks  that  Mazzoth,  like  the 
other  two  great  festivals  (Harvest  =  Weeks  ;  Ingathering  = 
Tabernacles),  was  essentially  an  agricultural  feast ;  that  these 
celebrations  were  not  confined  to  the  Hebrew  people  ;  and 
that  of  these  three  the  spring  festival  of  the  Passover 

"was  incomparably  the  most  important,  though  the  most 
severe,  solemnity,  as  the  future  blessings  of  the  year 
depended  upon  it."  ^ 

The  conclusion  forces  itself  upon  us 

"that  the  Pesach  meant  originally  the  'passing  over'  of  the 
first-borns  of  man  and  beast  to  the  sun-god,  and  that  the 
Canaanites,  i.e.  the  Phoenicians  and  others,  did  actually  at 
this  spring  festival,  on  the  fourteenth  day  of  the  month,  i.e.  the 
eve  of  the  full  moon,  sacrifice  the  first-borns  to  that  deity, 
from  whom  the  Israelites  adopted  the  practice  of  sacrificing 
their  first-borns  to  Jehovah,"  ^ 

which  lasted  through  the  reigns  of  all  the  Kings,  and  against 
which  the  prophets  in  vain  raised  their  voice.  These  facts 
speak  for  themselves,  even  if  we  had  not  the  express  assertion 
that  Ahaz  offered  up  his  son.  It  is  unnecessary,  therefore,  to 
go  back  to  the  narrative  of  the  sacrifice  of  Isaac,  although  this 
narrative  proves  that  the  practice  was  prevalent  in  the  days 
of  the  early  Kings.  The  purpose  of  this  story  is  clearly  to 
bring  about  the  abolition  of  the  practice  by  substituting  offer- 
1  Poitateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  417.  -  lb.  p.  422.  ^  lb.  p.  424. 


I87I-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  641 

ings  of  animals  ;  but  no  blame  is  attached  to  the  intention 
of  Abraham,  nor  are  there  any  severe  comments  on  those  who 
practised  the  rite,  and  assuredly  the  writer  does  not,  like  the 
prophets  of  a  later  day, 

"  condemn  it  utterly  as  impious,  and  abominable,  accursed  in 
the  sight  of  God  and  man  ;  and  it  may  be  that  his  own 
views  were  not  yet  sufficiently  clear  and  decided  to  enable 
him  to  do  so."  ^ 

But  by  the  admission  of  the  Jewish  historians  and  prophets 
the  besetting  sin  of  their  countrymen  was  to  copy  all  that  was 
idolatrous,  superstitious,  and  vile  in  the  worship  of  their 
subjects  or  their  neighbours.  There  is,  therefore,  absolutely 
no  room  for  doubt  that  the  Pesach  was  celebrated  with  the 
slaughter  of  the  first-borns,  and  that,  just  because  it  was  thus 
commonly  defiled  with  human  blood,  the  pre-Captivity  prophets 
never  name  it.     What  then  are  we  to  think  ? 

"If  the  service  of  the  Pesach  had  really  been  instituted  in  so 
remarkable  a  manner  and  on  such  a  memorable  occasion, 
and  enjoined  with  such  solemnity,  as  would  appear  from 
Exodus  xii.,  we  might  surely  have  expected  one  or  more  to 
indicate  it,  at  least  by  some  incidental  reference  ;  whereas  it 
is,  in  fact,  only  once  named  by  any  prophet,  viz.  in  Ezekiel 
xlv.  21,  written  during  the  Captivity.  The  Pesach,  however, 
though  not  named  by  the  original  story,  and  only  hinted  at 
by  it  as  existing  in  the  command  for  the  dedication  of  the 
first-born  in  Israel  of  man  and  beast,  .  .  .  had  come 
down,  with  a  practice  more  or  less  corrupt,  to  the  days  of 
the  Deuteronomist ;  and  he  endeavours  to  quicken  the 
observance  into  a  holy  sacrifice  for  all  Israel,  .  .  .  but 
without  the  least  allusion  to  the  name  having  been  derived 
from  the  fact  of  Yahve's  '  passing  over '  by  the  houses  of 
the  Israelites.  Down  to  his  days,  however,  .  .  .  the  Pesach, 
like  other  sacrifices,  was  offered  whenever  they  pleased,  in 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  425. 
VOL.  I.  T  T 


642  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

any  of  their  gates,  i.e.  at  any  of  the  sanctuaries  scattered 
throughout  the  land,  .  ,  .  where,  it  can  scarcely  be  doubted, 
first-born  children  were  actually  sacrificed,  being  first  slain 
and  then  burnt,  in  the  Deuteronomist's  own  time.  To 
provide  against  the  unchecked  continuance  of  these  abomi- 
nations, he  now  lays  down  the  law  that  the  Pesach  shall  in 
future  be  offered  by  the  whole  people  at  Jerusalem,  as  it 
was  offered  by  Josiah's  order  for  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  Israel."  1 

Throughout  the  history,  indeed,  we  seem  to  have  laws,  and 
no  observance  ;  institutions  and  no  acknowledgement  of  their 
working  ;  structures,  and  no  hint  that  any  one  had  ever 
seen  them. 

"  Not  a  trace  of  the  existence  of  the  magnificent  Mosaic 
tabernacle  can  be  found  anywhere  in  the  more  authentic 
history."  ^ 

Elaborate  injunctions  are  given  for  the  keeping  of  the  sabbati- 
cal year ;  but  there  is  "  no  sign  that  this  law,  which  is  mani- 
festly an  extension  of  the  law  of  the  Sabbath,  was  ever  carried 
out  in  practice  before  the  Captivity."  ^  To  a  certain  extent 
it  was  acted  upon  after  their  return  ;  but  not  so  the  law  of 
the  Jubilee,  by  which  at  the  end  of  each  half-century  two 
sabbatical  years,  during  which  the  land  was  not  to  be  tilled, 
came  together.  A  special  Divine  provision  was  to  guard 
them  from  any  hurtful  consequences  of  this  seeming  neglect ; 
but  the  result  was  not  always  happy.  When  Herod  took 
Jerusalem  by  storm,  it  was  afflicted,  Josephus  tells  us, 

"with  a  cruel  famine  within,  for  now  happened  to  be  the 
sabbatical  year,  for  it  was  at  this  melancholy  conjuncture 
and  during  the  time  of  it  our  law  prohibits  us  from  sowing 
any  manner  of  grain." 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  431.  -  lb.  p.  471. 

2  lb.     Hupfeld,  quoted  in  Part  VI.  p.  492. 


1 87 1-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  643 


As  to  the  observance  of  the  Jubilee,  there  is  no  indication 
whatever  that  it  was  ever  really  observed  even  after  the 
Captivity  ; 

"  and  there  is  certainly  not  the  slightest  proof  of  its  having 
been  celebrated  before  that  event."  ^ 

It  becomes,  therefore,  a  superfluous  task  to  examine  the  legal 
enactments  for  the  remission  of  debts  and  the  release  of 
debtors  in  connexion  with  an  ordinance  which  never  had  any 
existence  except  on  paper. 

Thus  from  the  reputed  history  of  the  Exodus,  and  of  the 
conquests  which  followed  it,  the  whole  of  the  elaborate 
religious,  civil,  and  social  legislation  is  summarily  shorn 
away.  No  portion  of  the  narrative,  it  is  found,  will  hold  water. 
Has  it,  then,  any  basis  at  all  to  rest  upon  ?  Adaptation  is  a 
very  mild  term  to  apply  to  the  process  which  has  shaped  not 
a  few  of  these  stories,  and  given  form  to  laws  on  which  the 
history  not  only  of  the  Jews  but  of  Christendom  also  has 
turned.  We  have  seen  that  the  original  story  knows  nothing 
of  the  priesthood  of  Aaron,  or  of  any  order  of  priests  at  all  ; 
that  the  position  of  the  priests  (a  mere  handful  in  number) 
was  in  the  days  of  the  earlier  kings  by  no  means  pre-eminent, 
while  that  of  the  Levites  was  altogether  insignificant.  Yet 
the  Levitical  Law  assigns  a  Divine  sanction  for  the  august 
functions  and  the  high  privileges  of  both  ;  and  on  this  subject 
the  following  is  the  judgement  of  Dr.  Kalisch,  himself  a  Jew. 

■"  It  was  God  who  singled  out  the  family  of  Aaron  as  His 
ministers.  His  representatives,  and  the  teachers  of  His 
Law ;  and  it  was  He  who  confirmed  this  election  by 
miraculous  interference,  the  budding  staff  of  Aaron,  and 
the  fearful  destruction  of  Aaron's  opponents,  Korah  and 
his  associates.      What  is  the  true  scope  and  import  of  these 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  495. 

T  T  2 


644  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

statements  ?  They  imply  the  artful  fiction  of  an  author  or 
authors,  who  attempted  to  promulgate  their  own  devices  as 
Divine  or  supernatural  arrangements,  and  thus  to  awe  an 
impressionable  nation  into  their  acceptance  and  reverential 
observance.  If  the  laws  of  the  priesthood  had  been  repre- 
sented as  the  work  of  human  legislators,  they  would  simply 
have  been  a  human  failure,  because  they  degraded  the 
people  instead  of  elevating  it.  But  as  the  pretended  ema- 
nation of  the  Divine  Will  they  are  both  a  failure  and  a 
fraud  ;  and  to  the  weakness  of  human  judgement  is  added 
the  offence  of  human  arrogance  and  deceit."  ^ 

But  these  laws,  instead  of  being  amongst  the  oldest,  are 
amongst  the  latest  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  When  Jere- 
miah, in  the  name  of  God,  says,  "  I  spake  not  unto  your 
fathers,  nor  commanded  them  in  the  day  that  I  brought  them 
out  of  the  land  of  Eg}-pt  concerning  burnt-offerings,"  it  is  clear 
that  he  could  not  have  so  written  if  the  sacrificial  laws  of 
Exodus,  Leviticus,  and  Numbers  had  been  actually  laid  down 
in  the  wilderness,  orhad  existed  in  his  time  in  the  stor}-  of  the 
Exodus.2     It  is  not  less  clear  that  Ezekiel  could  not  have 

"  composed  his  rules  for  the  regulation  of  the  priesthood,  their 
office  and  income,  if  these  subjects  had  been  already  fully 
treated  of  in  the  middle  books  of  the  Pentateuch,  nor  in 
any  case  could  he  have  presumed  to  lay  down  laws  at 
variance  with  laws  which  were  regarded  as  Mosaic,  as  even 
Divine."  3 

To  any  portion  of  the  Levitical  legislation  there  is  not,  in- 
deed, a  single  reference  in  any  pre-Captivity  writer  ;  nor  have 
wc  any  even  to  the  Decalogue  or  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy, 
until  we  come  to  Jeremiah.  But  the  very  fact  that  this 
prophet  makes  such  very  slight  allusion  to  this  book,  with 
which,  from  the  very  striking  circumstances  attending  its 
discovery  and  publication  in  Josiah's  time,  he  must  have  been 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  529.  -  Il>.  p.  593.  ^  lb.  p.  594. 


1 87 1-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  645 

very  thoroughly  acquainted,  and  which,  indeed,  reflects  every- 
where his  own  language  and  tone  of  thought,  is  itself,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  a  very  strong  confirmation  of  the  conclusion 
that  he  was  himself  the  writer  of  it^ 

The  real  history  of  the  Exodus  may  be  so  distorted  and  so 
buried  under  a  mass  of  arbitrary  additions  and  perversions  as 
to  be  lost  beyond  recall.  With  this  no  critic  has  anything  to 
do.  If  we  are  dealing  with  the  so-called  history  of  the  early 
Roman  kings,  and  if  the  scrutiny  brings  us  to  the  conclusion 
that  none  of  it  is  trustworthy  and  much  of  it  is  mere  fiction, 
our  task  is  really  ended.  If  from  the  materials  at  our  com- 
mand we  are  able  to  reconstruct  all  or  some  of  it,  well  and 
good.  If  we  cannot  do  so,  no  one  can  blame  us  for  not 
accomplishing  or  attempting  an  impossible  work.  But  why 
should  the  writer  of  the  Exodus  story,  whoever  he  may  have 
been,  have  represented  his  countrymen  as  miserable  slaves  in 
Egypt,  and  as  having  emerged  from  it  to  find  their  way  back 
to  their  old  abode  and  dislodge  those  who  were  in  possession 
of  it  t  Now,  Josephus  quotes  from  the  Egyptian  Manethon 
a  strange  tale  which  describes  an  invasion  of  Egypt  by  men 
of  ignoble  birth  from  the  Eastern  parts,-  resulting  in  the 
establishment  of  a  dynasty  of  six  kings,  who  reigned  for  about 
two  centuries  and  a  half.  Manethon  further  goes  into  a 
mysterious  story  of  shepherds  and  lepers,  who  are  sent  by 
King  Amenophis  to  work  in  the  quarries,  and,  obtaining  help 
from  the  shepherds  in  Jerusalem,  break  from  their  prison  and 
commit  dreadful  outrages,  under  the  leadership  of  a  priest  of 
Osiris,  named  Osarsiph,  who,  on  going  over  to  this  people, 
changed  his  name  to  Moses.  At  last,  Amenophis  came  up 
with  one  army,  and  his  son  Rameses  with  another,  and 
routing  these  shepherds,  pursued  them  as  far  as  the  frontiers 
of  Syria.3  The  story  is  dark  enough  ;  but  in  Kuenen's 
judgement 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  596.  -  lb.  p.  597.  ^  lb.  p.  599. 


646  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

"  its  agreement  with  the  Israehtish  tradition  about  the  Exodus 
is  unmistakeable.  The  Egyptians  regarded  all  foreigners 
as  unclean  :  it  cannot  surprise  us,  then,  if  they  called  the 
nomadic  tribes,  who  had  escaped  from  their  dominion,  a 
leprous  people.  Still  less  does  it  surprise  us  that  they 
ascribed  their  own  defeat  to  the  displeasure  ot  their  gods. 
It  is  further  remarkable  that,  according  to  this  account  also, 
the  harsh  measures  of  the  Egyptians,  and  in  particular  the 
slavish  service  imposed  by  them,  gave  occasion  to  the 
rebellion  of  those  oppressed,  and  moreover  that  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  laws  of  Osarsiph  and  the  Egyptian 
laws,  especially  his  aversion  to  the  gods  of  Egypt,  is  also 
here  recognised.  The  Book  of  Exodus  says  nothing 
about  the  help  rendered  by  the  Hyksos,  as  generally 
the  deliverance  of  Israel  is  viewed  therein  exclusively 
from  the  religious  point  of  view,  and  is  represented  as  the 
work  of  Yahv^e,  and  of  Him  alone.  Yet  we  find  in  it  some 
small  traces  of  an  indication  that  the  Israelites  found  sup- 
port from  the  nomadic  tribes  of  Arabia — that  is,  from  the 
Plyksos.  In  short  ....  we  must  hold  that  in  Manethon's 
narrative  we  have  the  Egyptian  reading  of  the  account  of 
the  Exodus  of  Israel."  ^ 

"  Such,  then,"  the  Bishop  adds,  "  was  very  probably  the 
basis  upon  which  the  Scripture  story  of  the  Exodus  has 
been  founded." 

We  ought  not,  indeed,  to  assume  that  the  Egyptian  version 
must  necessarily  be  more  true  than  the  Hebrew.  It  is  not 
unlikely  that  the  latter  may  in  some  points  be  nearer  to 
the  truth  of  facts  than  the  former ;  but  there  can  be  no 
question  that  the  motives  for  misrepresenting  or  distorting 
events  were  much  stronger  with  the  Jews  than  with  their 
opponents. 

"  No  doubt,"  the  Bishop  remarks,  "  the  Israelites  on  their 
march  to  Canaan  experienced  formidable  difficulties,  per- 

^  Feiitateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  600. 


1S7I-79-  THE  PENTATEl/CH:    ITS  GROWTH.  647 

haps  in  crossing  an  arm  of  the  Red  Sea,  and  certainly  in 
their  passage  through  the  wilderness.  ...  It  must  be 
observed,  however,  that  in  the  original  story  there  is  no 
sign  of  any  very  long  period,  such  as  forty  years,  having 
been  assigned  to  the  wanderings."  ^ 

It  gives,  in  fact,  no  data  of  time,  except  the  forty  days 
and  nights  twice  spent  by  Moses  on  Sinai,  and  the  three 
days  in  Numbers  x.  33. 

"  The  people  are  carried  on  at  once  from  Sinai  ,  .  .  ,  under 
the  guidance  of  Hobab  ....  till  they  reach  the  southern 
boundary  of  Canaan,  when  Moses  sends  forth  spies  to 
search  the  land,  ....  upon  whose  return  the  murmuring 
takes  place ;  and,  as  a  punishment  for  their  offence,  instead 
of  being  allowed  to  march  at  once  into  Canaan  and  make 
the  conquest  of  the  land,  they  are  ordered  to  turn  and  go 
back  again  into  the  wilderness  by  the  way  towards  the  Red 
Sea,  and  so  are  obliged  to  pass  around  the  southern  ex- 
tremity of  Mount  Seir,  and  then  turn  again  to  the  north, 
coasting  the  land  of  Edom,  and  making  their  entrance  into 
Canaan  from  the  eastern  side.  For  all  this  a  comparatively 
short  time  was  required,  except  that  they  are  spoken  of  as 
'  dwelling  '  at  Kadesh.  It  is  not  said  how  long  they  stayed 
at  Kadesh.  Perhaps  they  were  supposed  in  the  original 
story  to  dwell  there  for  a  short  time  only,  as  they  afterwards 
'  dwelt '  at  Shittim.  At  least,  according  to  the  data  of  the 
Deuteronomist  and  the  later  legislator,  as  the  story  now 
stands,  the  last  sojourn  can  have  lasted  only  for  a  very 
short  period,  since  after  Aaron's  death  on  the  first  day  of 
the  fifth  month,  and  the  mourning  for  him  thirty  days,  they 
make  the  whole  journey  from  Mount  Hor  to  compass  the 
land  of  Edom,  and  make  the  conquest  of  the  territories  of 
Sihon  and  Og — not  to  speak  of  the  war  against  Midian — 
and  yet  are  addressed  by  Moses  in  the  land  of  Moab  on  the 
first  day  of  the  eleventh  month.  The  extreme  abruptness 
of  the  narrative  at  this  point  (if  the  story  is  supposed  to 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  601, 


648  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

make  a  sudden  leap  of  nearly  forty  years  between  v.  i 
and  V.  14  of  Numbers  xx.)  and  the  utter  absence  of 
all  allusion  to  any  events  as  having  occurred  in  that 
interval,  seem  to  make  it  certain  that  no  idea  of  so  long  a 
wandering  was  entertained  by  the  writer  of  the  original 
story." 

That  a  history  so  amazing  in  its  incidents  and  so  astounding 
in  its  character  during  the  first  and  last  months  should  have 
been  interrupted  by  some  eight  or  nine  and  thirty  years 
about  which  there  was  nothing  to  tell  is  past  all  belief.  The 
fancy  rests  on  the  solitary  phrase  of  forty  years,  much  as  in 
the  old  Hindu  cosmogony  the  tortoise  rests  on  the  serpent, 
and  the  serpent  on  nothing.     But 

"  the  fact  that  the  Israelites  abstained  from  disturbing  Edom, 
Moab,  and  Ammon,  while  they  did  not  spare  the  Amorite 
invaders  of  Moab,  implies  a  special  relation  between  Israel 
and  these  peoples,  such  as  that  which  Manetho's  story 
implies  between  the  shepherd  kings  and  the  leprous 
people."  ^ 

From  this  point  we  can  see  our  way  more  clearly.  The 
historical  works  furnish  abundant  proof  that  the  Canaanite 
tribes  were  not  extirpated.  The  conquests  ascribed  to  Moses 
and  Joshua  as  the  work  of  a  few  weeks  were,  therefore, 

"  effected  in  a  much  longer  period,  and  by  much  more  gradual 
and  evcry-day  processes."  ^ 

But  our  knowledge  of  this  distant  time  is  bounded,  never 
theless,  within  narrow  limits. 

"  How  much  of  the  original  story  may  have  been  derived 
from  traditionary  or  legendary  matter  still  floating  in  the 
folk-lore  of  Israel,  and  how  much  is  due  to  the  writer's  own 
imagination,  it  is  impossible  to  say."  ^ 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  603.  2  /^  p^  (^^ 

■*  Id.  p.  614.     That  the  deliverance  from  Egypt  was  effected  under  the 


I87I-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  649 

If  we  believe  that  story,  only  the  seventy  who  went  down 
into  Egypt  knew  anything  of  the  land  of  Canaan  ;  and  under 
all  the  harassing  and  distressing  conditions  of  a  hard  servitude 
it  is  well-nigh,  if  not  altogether,  incredible  that,  when  these 
seventy  had  multiplied  into  a  nation  of  three  millions,  any 
knowledge  of  that  country  could  have  been  kept  up  among 
them.  Yet  they,  or  at  least  their  leaders,  are  said  to  have  in 
many  points  a  minute  acquaintance  with  the  land  to  which 
they  were  journeying.  But  these  pictures  we  have  seen  to 
be  fabrications  of  a  later  age  ;  and  we  have  seen  also  how 
scanty  is  the  residuum  of  actual  fact  which  by  the  largest 
concessions  can  be  allowed  to  lie  at  the  root  of  the  narra- 
tive. 

"  When,  further,"  the  Bishop  adds,  "  we  take  account  of  the 
possibility  that  these  forefathers  were  never  in  the  land  of 
Canaan  at  all ;  that,  in  point  of  fact,  they  never  existed  as 
individuals,  but  correspond  to  the  mythical  founders  of 
other  nations,  whose  stories  are  for  the  most  part  composed 
of  fabulous  narratives,  which,  as  far  as  they  have  any  his- 
torical truth  at  their  basis,  shadow  forth  the  doings  of  tribes 
and  generations,  instead  of  persons,  we  may  fairly  conclude 
that  a  very  large  portion,  at  least,  of  the  stories  in  Genesis 
are  merely  fictions,  intended  to  support  the  notion  that  the 

guidance  of  Moses,  the  Bishop  had  Httle  doubt  ;  but  the  narrative  says 
(and  on  this  point  there  is,  probably,  no  reason  for  mistrusting  it)  that  he 
died  before  they  entered  Canaan.  As  to  Joshua,  he  found  himself  com- 
pelled to  speak  more  trenchantly.  "  He  appears,"  he  said, ''  to  be  entirely 
a  mythical  character,  most  of  his  great  exploits  having  been  recorded  only 
by  the  Deuteronomist  in  Josiah's  time,  and  apparently  from  his  own  ima- 
gination— not  even  from  legendary  traditions  about  him,  if  any  could  be 
supposed  to  have  been  handed  down  vividly  through  the  lapse  of  eight 
centuries.  For,  surely,  if  such  legends  were  current  in  the  days  of  Josiah, 
and  retained  so  strongly  in  the  recollections  of  the  people  that  the 
Deuteronomist  could  undertake  the  task  of  collecting  them  and  recording 
them  permanently  on  parchment,  we  should  find  some  trace  of  the  renown 
of  this  great  conqueror  in  the  Psalms  and  prophets  ;  whereas  his  very 
name  is  never  once  mentioned." —  Worship  of  Baalim,  p.  9. 


650  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

Israelites  had  an  old  outstanding  claim  upon  the  land  which 
they  had  seized,"  ^ 

Abraham  having  bought  Hebron,  and  Jacob  Shcchem,  these 
two  places  being  the  chief  centres  of  royalty  in  later  days  for 
the  kingdoms  of  Judah  and  of  Ephraim. 

But  the  record  was  of  slow  growth.     After  the  completion 
of  the  original  story,  in  the  early  years  probably  of  Solomon, 

"the  work  remained  untouched,  and  perhaps  lay  deposited 
beside  the  ark  in  the  Temple  till  the  days  of  Jeremiah  (the 
Deuteronomist),  who,  as  a  priest  himself,  his  father  Hilkiah 
being  also,  very  possibly,  the  chief  priest  at  the  time,  would 
in  that  case  have  had  free  access  to  this  venerable  manuscript, 
and  (as  we  suppose)  retouched  and  enlarged  it  throughout 
in  his  own  prophetical  style,  and  ultimately  inserted  the 
Law  (in  the  fifth  and  following  chapters  of  Deuteronomy, 
as  *  the  words  of  the  covenant  which  Jehovah  commanded 
Moses  to  make  with  the  children  of  Israel  in  the  land  of 
Moab ')," 

the  discovery  of  which  led  to  Josiah's  reformation.  In  such 
records  there  must  be  much  matter  for  instruction,  and  not  a 
little,  it  may  be,  for  edification  ;  but  the  lessons  inforced  by 
it  must  be  absolutely  antagonistic  with  the  results  of  tradi- 
tional interpretation.  For  any  dogma,  for  any  ritual  or  cere- 
monial, for  any  forms  of  religious  or  civil  government,  these 
writings  become  altogether  worthless  ;  and  with  the  demon- 
stration of  the  unhistorical  character  of  all  these  writings 
the  stories  of  marvellous  incidents  and  prodigies  are  swept 
away.  That  they  should  disappear  is  a  cause  for  thankfulness, 
not  for  regret.  There  will  be  no  healthy  thought  and  life  in 
Christendom  until  Christians  generally  are  convinced,  in  the 
words  of  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith,  that,  "  if  a  religion  is  to  be 
judged   not  by  its  contents  but  by  its  evidences,  it  must  be 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  \'I.  p.  615. 


1871-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  651 

the  lowest  and  vilest  religion  in  the  world."  ^  The  examination 
of  the  record  has  shown  the  traditional  idol  to  be,  like  the 
serpent  thrown  down  by  Hezekiah,  Nehushtan,  a  thing  of 
brass. 

"  There  is,"  the  Bishop  emphatically  insists,  "  no  infallible 
book  for  our  guidance,  as  there  is  no  infallible  Church,  or 
infallible  man.  The  Father  of  Spirits  has  not  willed  it 
thus,  who  knows  best  what  is  needed  for  each  individual 
soul,  as  well  as  for  that  of  the  race."  ^ 

The  consequences  are  momentous  indeed.  The  foundations 
of  ceremonial  and  priestly  religion  are  laid  in  the  Levitical 
legislation  ;  with  the  exposition  of  the  true  nature  and  origin, 
of  that  law  the  system  raised  on  it  crumbles  to  its  base,  and 
a  vista  is  opened  before  us  along  which  our  eye  is  carried 
through  a  series  of  reforms  not  acceptable  to  traditionalists. 
The  fact  is  that  the  snake  of  tradition  has  been  scotched,  not 
killed.  The  Bishop  quotes  some  words  of  Bishop  Harold 
Browne  in  reference  to  Church  of  England  schools. 

"  We  have  not,"  says  Bishop  Browne,  "  troubled  their  little 
brains,  as  some  people  seem  to  think,  with  all  kinds  of 
dogmatic  theology,  though,  by  the  by,  I  don't  think  people 
know  what  dogmatic  theology  means.  The  fact  that  there 
is  a  God,  is  dogmatic  theology.  The  facts  that  there  is  a 
heaven,  a  hell,  that  our  Saviour  came  down  to  save  us, — 
that  is  dogmatic  theology.  But  wc  have  not  been  teaching 
them  the  meaning  of  Bishops  and  the  Church  ;  and  if  I 
went  into  our  Sunday  schools,  and  asked,  What  is  the  office 
of  a  Bishop  ?  the  children  would  lift  up  their  eyes  and  hands- 
and  say.  What  does  a  Bishop  mean  .''  "  ^ 

The  statement  is  in  the  highest  degree  doubtful  ;  but  if  it 
be  true,  then  it  would  be  altogether  better  that  the  children 
should  have  some  knowledge  of  early  Church  history,  than 

^  See  above,  p.  363.  2  Peiitateuch,  Part  VI.  p.  626. 

2  lb.  p.  641. 


652  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  CHAP.  xii. 

that  they  should  learn  what  Bishop  Browne  is  pleased  to  call 
the  dogmas  of  a  heaven  and  a  hell,  and  the  descent  of  a 
Saviour  to  save — terms  which,  for  all  we  know,  may  be  left  (as 
they  often  are  left)  undefined,  but  of  which  the  true  meaning 
was  expressed  before  the  Norman  Conquest  in  the  good 
old  English  which  spoke  of  Christ  as  the  "  Healer "  and  of 
His  work  as  "  healing "  or  making  sound  and  whole.  In 
sober  truth,  no  terms  can  be  kept  with  this  language  of 
Bishop  Browne.  It  is  equivocal,  misleading,  and  false.  The 
office  of  the  Bishop  may  be  so  explained  as  to  bring  in  the 
notion  of  apostolical  succession  "  with  its  whole  fitting 
apparatus  of  the  sacrificing  priest  and  the  sacramental  sys- 
tem ; "  and  the  dogma,  as  Bishop  Browne  terms  it,  of  a 
heaven  and  a  hell  is  used  to  set  forth  not  merely  a  righteous 
judgement  "to  which  the  conscience  of  a  child  will  witness  as 
surely  as  does  the  conscience  of  each  one  of  us,"  but 

"  the  everlasting  torments  of  hell  fire,  that  horrible  dogma, 
which  dooms  to  never-ending  irremediable  woe  the  vast 
majority  of  men,  women,  and  children,  with  whom  they 
meet  upon  their  daily  pathway ;  that  blasphemous  dogma, 
which  makes  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
the  Father  of  mercies  and  the  God  of  all  consolation,  into 
a  very  Moloch,  reigning  through  endless  ages  in  glory  and 
blessedness,  while  shrieks  and  groans  are  ever  resounding 
from  the  bottomless  abyss, — the  cries  of  young  children,  as 
Bishop  Wilberforce  teaches,  and,  as  some  Fathers  of  the 
Church  have  held,  of  little  innocent  babes  among  the  rest." 

This  term  "  dogmatic  theology "  is  utterly  absurd.  It 
applies  to  nothing  but  the  result  of  human  debates,  and  these 
do  not,  and  cannot,  affect  the  realities  of  the  eternal  world  in 
which  alone  is  our  true  life  now  and  always.  To  tell  children, 
or  to  tell  heathens,  that  they  have  a  Father,  a  Redeemer  or 
Healer,  and  a  Sanctifier,  who  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  and 
whose  will  is  that  sin  shall  be  destroyed  in  all,  is  not  to  teach 


1 87 1-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  653 

dogma,  or  to  impose  on  them  the  yoke  of  a  dogmatic 
theology.  But  so  soon  as  we  begin  to  deal  in  propositions  and 
demand  assent  to  formulae  (it  matters  not  of  what  kind),  the 
weight  of  this  yoke  at  once  makes  itself  felt  ;  and  sooner  or 
later  the  result  must  be  revolt,  not  against  the  Law  or  the 
Love  of  God,  but  against  the  system  which  has  withheld  men 
from  seeing  the  righteousness  and  the  light  in  which  alone 
they  can  have  life. 

Eight  years  more  passed  away  before  the  Bishop  was  able 
to  bring  his  long  and  arduous  examination  of  the  Pentateuch 
to  an  end  by  the  publication  of  his  Seventh  Part.  The  very 
nature  of  the  inquiry,  and  the  conditions  under  which  he 
worked,  made  it  most  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  for  him  to 
avoid  a  certain  amount  of  repetition  and  some  appearance  of 
prolixity.  Whatever  defects  of  this  kind  may  be  seen  in  his 
volumes,  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  offer  an  apology  for  them. 
The  superficial  reader  is  not  likely  to  discern  them  ;  the 
genuine  student  will  not  only  not  be  offended  by  them,  but 
will  at  once  understand  why  inferences  or  conclusions,  hinted 
at  rather  than  worked  out  in  the  earlier  Parts,  called  for  more 
systematic  elaboration  later  on,  and  why  in  the  later  volumes 
it  became  necessary  to  give  the  full  evidence  for  judgements 
which  had  been  impugned  as  being  unwarranted  or  arbitrary. 
This  remark  applies  especially  to  the  later  historical  books  of 
the  Old  Testament,  on  which  a  flood  of  light  was  poured  by 
the  analysis  given  in  the  Sev^enth  and  last  Part  of  the  Bishop's 
work.  No  part  of  his  task,  probably,  has  been  more  fruitful. 
It  has  shown  us  that  in  almost  every  instance  the  additions 
made  by  the  chronicler  to  the  narratives  in  Samuel  and  Kings 
have  been  made  in  the  interest  of  the  later  ecclesiastical 
system  ;  and  we  are  further,  in  the  Bishop's  words,  enabled, 

"  to  trace  his  hand  in  the  Books  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  and 
even  in  th:;  Chaldee  parts  of  Ezra,  and  to  see  that  not  only 


654  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

the  whole  of  the  narrative  in  Ezra,  and  much  of  it  in 
Nehemiah,  but  also  decrees  ascribed  to  Cyrus,  Darius, 
Artaxerxes,  letters  purporting  to  come  from  Tatnai  and 
Artaxerxes,  the  prayer  of  Ezra,  and  the  Levite's  prayer  in 
Nehemiah,  are  all  pure  inventions  of  the  chronicler,  as 
much  so  as  the  letters  of  Hiram,  Elijah,  Hezekiah,  the 
speeches  of  David,  Abijah,  Jehoshaphat,  Azariah,  Hezekiah, 
the  prayers  of  David,  Asa,  and  Jehoshaphat,  the  prophecies 
of  Shemaiah,  Azariah,  Hanani,  Jehu,  Jahaziel,  Zechariah, 
Obed,  in  the  Books  of  Chronicles,  all  of  which  exhibit 
plainly  the  chronicler's  own  peculiar  style,  just  exactly  as 
all  the  speeches  ascribed  to  different  persons  in  Homer  or 
Virgil,  Thucydides  or  Tacitus,  exhibit  one  and  the  same 
style,  viz.  that  of  the  Greek  or  Roman  writer  to  whose 
imagination  they  are  due."  ^ 

The  deliberate  modification  or  invention  of  historical 
incidents  is  an  act  on  which  it  is  not  easy  to  look  with  indul- 
gence. But  it  is  the  fault  of  the  traditionalists  if  a  harder 
measure  is  dealt  out  to  the  chronicler  than  to  other  historians 
whose  veracity  is  supposed  by  many  to  lie  beyond  reach  of 
question.  A  large  majority  of  Greek  scholars  would  probably 
put  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Hebrew  chronicler  far  below 
the  level  of  that  of  Thucydides  ;  and  yet  in  the  pages  of  the 
latter  we  have  in  the  case  of  Themistokles  a  history  not  less 
garbled  than  that  of  the  priests  and  Levites  in  Chronicles, 
and  also  the  insertion  of  documents  which  are,  beyond  doubt, 
sheer  forgeries,  and  as  to  which  the  historian,  even  if  he  was 
not  himself  the  forger,  cannot  be  acquitted  of  all  responsi- 
bility. There  is  no  difficulty  in  the  supposition  that  the 
chronicler  may  have  had  access  to  the  text  of  a  published 
decree  of  the  Persian  Sovereign.  The  only  question  is  as  to 
the  fact  of  publication.  It  is  quite  otherwise  when  Thucy- 
dides professes  to  give  us  the  exact  text  of  a  letter  written  by 
Themistokles  to  Artaxerxes.  He  tells  us  that  Themistokles 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  xii. 


J87I-79-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  655 

wrote  the  letter.  If  he  did  so,  the  original  must  have 
gone  to  Artaxerxes.  In  this  case  we  must  (as  I  have 
had  to  say  elsewhere)  ^  suppose  one  of  three  things — either 
Themistokles  kept  a  copy  of  it,  or  Artaxerxes  sent  back  the 
original,  or  allowed  a  transcript  to  be  made.  The  last  degree 
of  unlikelihood  attaches  to  all  these  suppositions.  The 
original  could  be  recovered  only  from  the  archives  of  Sousa, 
and,  apart  from  the  unlikelihood  that  such  documents  would 
be  preserved  at  all,  there  is  the  far  greater  unlikelihood  that 
they  would  ever  be  given  up  to  the  king's  enemies.  If  these 
alternatives  fail  us,  one  conclusion  only  is  possible — namely, 
that  the  letter,  as  we  have  it,  is  a  forgery.  But  this  forgery  is 
made  to  further  a  falsification  of  history  as  glaring  as  any  of 
which  the  chronicler  could  be  guilty  ;  and  it  is  only  accident 
which  has  made  the  results  of  his  fabrication  more  mischievous 
than  those  of  the  fictions  to  which  Thucydides  gave  the  sanc- 
tion of  his  great  name. 

Since  the  publication  of  the  Bishop's  Sixth  Part,  the  long- 
promised  Speaker  s  Commentary  has  been  given  to  the  world. 
Of  this  we  shall  have  to  speak  more  particularly  further  on. 
For  the  present  we  need  remark  only  some  of  the  admissions 
which  show  the  absurdity  of  Bishop  Gray's  or  Bishop  Wilber- 
force's  notion  of  the  futility  or  the  childishness  of  Bishop 
Colenso's  criticisms.  These  admissions  are  indeed  fatal  to  the 
popular  traditional  views,  and  therefore,  although  they  come 
from  critics  with  an  established  orthodox  reputation,  they 
have  been  kept  carefully  out  of  sight  by  the  so-called  orthodox 
preachers  and  teachers.     Thus  we  have  the  admission 

"  that  we  have  no  correct  record  of  the  Ten  Commandments, 
as  supposed  to  have  been  uttered  by  the  Divine  Voice  on 
Mount  Sinai,  in  either  of  the  two  Decalogues  given  in  the 
Pentateuch,  which  '  differ  from  each  other  in  several  weighty 

^  Lives  of  Greek  Statesmen,  i.  p.  191, 


656  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

particulars,'  especially  in  the  reason  assigned  for  observing 
the  Sabbath."  1 

We  have,  further,  the  suggestion  that  all  the  Ten  Command- 
ments may  originally  have  been  uttered  "  in  the  same  terse 
and  simple  form,  such  as  would  be  most  suitable  for  recollec- 
tion," which  appears  in  the  first,  sixth,  seventh,  eighth,  and 
ninth  ;  although  both  in  Exodus  and  Deuteronomy  the 
Decalogue  is  put  forth,  with  all  its  amplifications,  as  the  actual 
words  of  Jehovah  on  Sinai,  and  although  the  assigning  of  a 
terse  and  simple  form  to  a  Divine  utterance  involves,  on 
examination,  a  wonderful  profanity.  Still  more  significant  is 
the  assumption  throughout  this  Coimnentary  that,  except  in 
respect  of  the  Decalogue,  Moses  himself  was  the  lawgiver,  and 
that  the  phrase  "the  Lord  spake  unto  Moses"  "does  not 
imply  that  there  was  any  oral  communication,"  although,  if 
there  be  oral  communication  to  the  extent  of  half  a  dozen  or 
of  ten  sentences,  it  is  as  easy  to  imagine  the  like  communica- 
tion to  the  extent  of  a  folio  volume.  Nor  is  this  all.  The 
Commentary  declares  that  Moses  simply  prescribed  certain 
laws  and  institutions  for  his  people,  which  he  had  not  un- 
frequently  adopted  from  existing  and  ancient  customs.  One 
of  the  most  prominent  instances  of  such  legislation  is  the 
loathsome  and  utterly  futile  law  of  jealousy,  given  in  the  fifth 
chapter  of  Numbers.  This  law  is  introduced  as  being  not  less 
emphatically  "spoken  by  Jehovah  to  Moses  "  than  any  other, 
and  yet  the  Covwientary  says,  point  blank,  that 

"  this,  like  several  other  ordinances,  was  adopted  by  Moses 
from  existing  and  probably  very  ancient  and  widespread 
superstitions."  - 

Nothing  more  than  this  is  wanted.  These  words  should  be 
written  up  in  letters  of  gold  (if  such  a  fancy  may  for  a  moment 

1  Pcjitateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  xiv.  ^  lb.  p.  xv. 


i879.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  657 

be  allowed)  for  all  men  to  see  not  only  that  there  was  a  full 
justification  for  the  work  undertaken  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal, 
but  that  this  work  was  triumphantly  accomplished.  If  it  had 
not  been  for  that  work,  it  is  not  a  matter  of  doubt,  it  is  a 
certainty,  that  these  admissions  in  the  Commentary  would  not 
have  been  made.  The  only  difference  between  the  Bishop 
and  the  Commentary  is  this,  that  the  former  worked  and 
spoke  candidly  and  straightforwardly,  while  the  latter  makes 
admissions,  not  less  fatal  to  all  the  traditional  notions,  and 
allows  them  to  appear  along  with  phrases  which  seem  to  lend 
a  weak  colour  to  those  notions,  while  really  they  lend  none. 
But  admissions  and  qualifications  are  often  of  not  less  value 
than  direct  acknowledgments  of  defeat,  and  these  admissions 
of  the  Commentary  must  be  kept  in  the  forefront,  as  justifying 
the  application  of  the  same  method  to  the  narratives  of  the 
New  Testament  as  well  as  of  the  Old. 

It  is  quite  impossible  to  lay  too  much  stress  on  this  matter. 
The  writer  in  the  Speaker  s  Commentary  has  treated  as 
derived  from  popular  practices,  or  from  popular  superstitions, 
precepts  which  are  said  to  come  straight  from  God  Himself 
If  these  do  not  come  from  God,  are  there  any  others  for  which 
this  claim  can  be  urged  .'  The  commentators  have  used  a 
two-edged  sword,  and  their  weapon  has  left  them  helpless. 
There  is  no  so-called  rationalistic  conclusion  which  is  not 
thoroughly  justified  by  their  language.  This  horrible  law  of 
jealousy,  which,  as  we  read  it  in  the  Book  of  Numbers,  excites 
an  irrepressible  loathing,  was  not  peculiar  to  the  Jewish  or 
Canaanitish  tribes.  A  similar  ordeal  has  been,  and  perhaps 
is  still,  in  vogue  in  Western  Africa,  and,  it  may  be,  in  other 
parts  of  the  world.  Of  this  the  commentator  is  quite  aware, 
for  he  says  : — 

■"  There  is  no  evidence  to  show  whether  this  usage  sprang  from 
imitation  of  the  Law  of  Moses,  or  whether  Moses  himself 
VOL.  I.  U  U 


6s 8  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

in  this,  as  in  other  things,  engrafted  his  ordinances  on  a 
previously  existing  custom," 

that  is,  upon  a  "  superstition,"  which,  according  to  the  record, 
was  laid  down  or  sanctioned  by  Jehovah  Himself.^ 

In  the  same  story  the  regulations  for  burnt-offerings  and 
drink-offerings  are  said  in  the  Book  of  Numbers  (xxvii.  3,  8) 
to  proceed  directly  from  God  ;  but  the  commentator  has  no 
hesitation  in  assigning  the  customs  of  other  nations  as  their 
origin,  and  in  saying  that 

"  this  practice  would  naturally  betray  itself  in  the  language 
now  employed  by  Moses," 

or  rather,  according  to  the  record,  by  God  Himself,- 

Still  more,  the  commentators  admit  that  others  besides 
Moses  may  have  had  a  share  in  the  legislation  which  bears 
his  name, 

"  It  is,"  we  are  told,  "  by  no  means  unlikely  that  there  are 
insertions  of  a  later  date,  which  were  written  or  sanctioned 
by  the  prophets  and  holy  men,  who  after  the  Captivity 
arranged  and  edited  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament." 

The  likelihood  here  asserted  is  nothing  less  than  this,  that 
these  holy  men  inserted  in  the  Pentateuch  passages  which 
they  themselves  had  written,  but  which  they  meant  to  be 
regarded  by  their  countrymen  in  all  future  ages  as  portions 
of  a  Divine  revelation  made  of  old  to  Moses  ;  ^  and  this  is 
admitted  in  a  Coi?tvtentary,  which,  it  is  no  breach  of  charity 
to  say,  was  designed  to  exhibit  the  critical  method  of  the 
Bishop  of  Natal  as  childish,  and  his  conclusions  as  absurd. 
With  irresistible  force  the  Speaker  s  Conwientary  has  pro- 
claimed that  his  method  and  conclusions  are  not  merely  not 
childish   and    absurd,   but    are    indispensable   in   any  search 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  xv.  2  /^  p  xvi.  '  lb. 


iS79-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  659 

which  is  to  guide  us  to  the  truth  of  facts.  Critics  do  not 
and  will  not  agree  in  everything.  If  they  did,  we  should  be 
compelled  to  infer  that  they  were  working  and  writing  in 
collusion  ;  but  the  substantial  harmony  reached  by  scholars 
during  the  present  century  is  astonishing,  and  the  agreement 
between  the  Bishop  and  Dr.  Kalisch  is  in  a  special  degree 
satisfactory.  Approaching  the  subject  from  a  very  different 
point  of  view,  the  latter  was  brought  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  laws  in  Leviticus  are  of  later  origin  than  the  correspond- 
ing enactments  in  Deuteronomy.  On  this  point  hinges,  he 
insists,  the  true  insight,  not  only  into  the  composition  of  the 
Pentateuch,  but  into  the  entire  history  of  Hebrew  theology. 
Hence,  the  Book  of  Leviticus  did  not  exist,  or,  at  least,  was 
not  regarded  as  authoritative,  in  the  earlier  years  of  the  Baby- 
lonish Captivity  ;  and  the  final  revision  of  Leviticus  and  of 
the  Pentateuch  must  be  placed  probably  at  400  B.c.^  It  is 
also  highly  instructive,  and  to  the  Bishop  it  was  most  satis- 
factory, to  find  Kalisch  asserting  that  the  author  of  the  "  book 
of  Balaam  "  was  not  the  Jehovist,  or  Elohist,  or  final  compiler 
of  the  Book  of  Numbers,  but  one  of  the  greatest  seers  of 
Israel  in  the  fresh  and  vigorous  time  of  David,  who  wrote 
after  the  conquest  of  Moab,  "  inspired  by  those  glorious 
triumphs  which  the  last  prophecy  introduces  with  such  pecu- 
liar power  and  pride."  But  the  episode  about  the  ass  Dr. 
Kalisch  regards  as  a  later  interpolation,  and  "  the  more  so  " 
as  that  passage  interrupts  the  thread  of  the  narrative,  destroys 
the  unity  and  symmetry  of  the  conception,  and  is,  in  spirit 
and  form,  as  a  whole  and  in  its  details,  strikingly  different 
from  the  main  portion.^     The  Bishop  could  now  speak  of 

"  the  very  late  post-exilic  origin  of  the  Levitical  legislation 
of  the  Pentateuch  and  Joshua,  including  both  the  laws  and 
the  historical  narrative  connected  with  them,  ....  as  an 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  \'II.  p.  xxvi.  ^  lb,  p.  xxvii. 

U  U  2 


66o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

established  fact.  ...  In  short,  not  only  are  the  composite 
character  of  Genesis  and  its  non- Mosaic  origin  ascertained 
as  fully  by  the  researches  of  modern  critical  science,  as  the 
main  facts  of  modern  geological  or  astronomical  science, 
.  .  .  but  the  composition  of  Deuteronomy  in  the  age  of 
Josiah,  and  of  the  Levitical  legislation  during  and  after  the 
Captivity,  as  also  the  fictitious  character  of  the  chronicler's 
variations  and  modifications  of  the  older  history  in  Samuel 
and  Kings,  are  points  upon  which  there  may  be  said  to 
be  among  Biblical  scholars  almost  unanimous  agreement, 
whatever  differences  may  still  exist  as  to  minor  details."  ^ 

Among  these  questions,  of  secondary  importance  would  be 
the  age  to  be  assigned  to  the  Jehovist.  The  age  of  the 
Elohist  is  a  more  serious  consideration.  The  reasons  which 
led  the  Bishop  to  fix  it  in  the  life-time  of  Samuel  have  been 
already  laid  with  all  practicable  fulness  before  the  reader.  The 
arguments  which  induced  Kuenen  to  bring  it  down  to  the 
Babylonish  Captivity,  or  even  to  a  later  period,  the  Bishop 
gave  with  impartial  exactness  in  the  Appendix  (125)  to  his 
Sixth  Part.  In  the  Seventh  he  returns  (Appendix,  152)  to  the 
same  inquir}',  and  with  the  same  results.  Even  this  scrutiny, 
whatever  be  the  issue,  cannot  affect  the  one  question  of  the 
non-Mosaic  and  non-historical  character  of  the  Pentateuch 
which,  at  starting,  the  Bishop  set  himself  to  answer.  But  on 
the  whole  he  might  well  say  that  the  theory  rested  on  in- 
sufficient evidence,  while  the  indications  of  the  earlier  com- 
position of  the  Elohistic  narrative  seem  very  strong  indeed.^ 
For  English  students  they  can  scarcely  fail  to  be  conclusive. 

We  have  seen  the  havoc  wrought  by  writers  in  the  Speaker's 
Commentary  on  the  traditional  beliefs.  But  some  effort  is 
made  to  uphold  these  beliefs  in  the  modified  shape,  that  Moses 
originally  published  the  Decalogue  in  an  abridged  form  (that 
is,  that  he  on  his  own  responsibility  abridged  the  utterances 

'  Pcntaicuch,  Part  VII.  p.  xxix.  -  lb.  p.  xxxi. 


iS79-  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  66 1 

of  God  Himself),  and  therefore  that  he  communicated  to  them 
the  name  Jehovah  as  that  of  the  God  of  Israel,  and  must  be 
supposed  to  have  exhibited  great  energy  and  ability  in  ruling 
and  instructing  his  people.^  To  this  (the  traditional  ground 
being  professedly  abandoned  on  both  sides)  the  reply  is,  that 
the  original  story  did  not  contain  the  Ten  Precepts,  that  there 
is  positively  no  room  for  them,  as  the  story  goes  on  con- 
tinuously in  such  a  way  as  to  show  that  the  Decalogue  could 
not  have  been  inserted  in  the  original  narrative,  and  that  it 
is  really  the  work  of  the  Deuteronomist.  But  there  remains  a 
further  inference  of  no  small  moment. 

"If  Moses  did  not  publish  the  Decalogue  in  any  form  .... 
(and  no  prophet  makes  the  least  allusion  to  it),  and  if  he 
was  not  the  author  of  either  the  Deuteronomistic  or  the 
Levitical  legislation,  it  is  obvious  that  his  action  as  a 
legislator,  as  exhibited  in  the  original  story,  will  be  reduced 
within  very  narrow  limits,  and  will  be  confined,  in  fact,  to 
the  series  of  primitive  laws,  the  'words  and  judgements,'  in 
Exodus  xxii.  22,  which  must  have  been  written,  originally, 
in  the  land  of  Canaan."  2 

In  other  words,  even  in  the  framing  of  these,  he  could  have 
had  only  a  small  part ;  and  therefore  the  Bishop  found  himself 
constrained  to  add 

"  that  it  will  advance  greatly  the  criticism  of  the  Pentateuch, 
and  assist  materially  towards  forming  a  true  conception  as 
to  the  civil  and  religious  history  of  the  Hebrew  people,  if 
the  notion  of  the  activity  of  Moses  is  altogether  abandoned, 
and  the  name  regarded  as  merely  that  of  the  imaginary 
leader  of  the  people  out  of  Egypt — a  personage  quite  as 
shadowy  and  unhistorical  as  ^Eneas  in  the  history  of  Rome 
or  our  own  King  Arthur."  s 

Such  was  his  mature  conclusion  after  the  lapse  of  seven 
years  from  the  publication  of  Part  VI.     During  this  interval 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  xxxi.  ^  lb.  p.  xxxii. 

^  lb.  J  see  also  above,  p.  649. 


662  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

he  had  "gone  over  the  ground  again  and  again,"  with  respect 
to  every  part  of  his  criticisms.  On  some  of  the  questions 
brought  up  by  the  inquiry  critics  were  still  divided.  On  the 
great  points  they  were  at  one.     But  he  felt  assured  that 

"  no  amount  of  thought  and  labour  will  be  grudged,  or  will  be 
reckoned  as  wasted,  by  those  who  have  been  closely  engaged 
in  this  part  of  the  work,  which  shall  help  in  any  degree  to 
clear  the  way  for  the  more  thorough  knowledge  of  the  com- 
position of  the  Pentateuch,  and  the  age  and  authorship  of 
its  different  portions — upon  which  depends  so  much  the 
progress  of  true  Christianity  in  the  world,  the  work  of 
missions  among  Mohammedans,  Parsees,  Buddhists,  and 
heathens,  and  (in  one  word)  the  future  religion  of  the  human 
race."  ^ 

For  the  purposes  of  scholarship  and  criticism,  the  contro- 
versy had  thus  been  brought  to  an  end  :  and  that  this  should 
in  so  short  a  time  have  been  the  result  shows  that  his  work 
was  indeed  an  astonishing  achievement.  But  the  Speaker  s 
Commentary ,  which  made  concessions  decisive  of  the  real 
matters  in  debate,  made  use  at  the  same  time  of  language 
under  cover  of  which  it  was  hoped  that  the  old  beliefs  might 
yet  be  kept  up  amongst  the  multitudes,  although  in  the  eyes 
of  the  learned  they  had  been  utterly  discredited.  It  may  be 
said  that  such  a  method  is  highly  disingenuous.  If  it  be  so, 
they  who  have  practised  it  have  themselves  only  to  thank  for 
the  imputation.  Assuredly  their  utterances  do  not  redound 
altogether  to  their  honour  ;  but  they  will  work  immense  good 
for  generations  yet  to  come.  The  orthodox  students  of  the 
next  century  will  start  with  the  declarations  made  by  such  a 
writer  as  Bishop  Lord  Arthur  Harvey,  and  will  in  greater  or 
less  degree  carry  them  out  to  their  logical  consequences.  From 
him  they  will  learn  that  there  is  little  difficulty  as  to  the 
authorship  of  the  two  Books  of  Kings,  inasmuch  as 
^  Pentatettch,  Part  VII.  p.  xxxiv. 


i879.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  663 

"the  Jewish  tradition  which  ascribes  them  to  Jeremiah  is 
borne  out  by  the  strongest  internal  evidence,  in  addition  to 
that  of  the  language."  ^ 

These  books,  he  urges,  have  a  general  character  of  trust- 
worthiness ;  but  their  chronological  details  "  are  inexplicable 
and  frequently  contradictory."  The  very  first  date,  that  of 
the  foundation  of  Solomon's  Temple,  is  "  manifestly  erroneous," 
and  the  evidence  of  its  being  an  interpolation  is  wonderfully 
strong.     But  if  so,  Bishop  Harvey  adds, 

"  it  must  have  been  inserted  by  a  professed  chronologist,  whose 
object  was  to  reduce  the  Scripture  history  to  an  exact 
system  of  chronology," 

and  these  insertions,  he  holds, 

"  are  the  work  of  a  much  later  hand,  or  hands,  than  the  books 
themselves." 

These  expressions,  the  Bishop  of  Natal  tells  us,  are  rather 
strong  to  come  with  the  sanction  of  theologians,  som.e  of  whom 
had  declared  that 

^'  all  our  hopes  for  eternity,  the  very  foundation  of  our  faith, 
our  nearest  and  dearest  consolations,  are  taken  from  us,  if 
one  line  of  that  sacred  book  be  declared  to  be  unfaithful  and 
untrustworthy." 

And  here  the  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells  has  rejected  scores 
of  sentences  as  interpolations,  and  as  interpolations  of  matter 
which  is  wrong,  erroneous,  and  misleading.^  This  chronologist 
in  Graf's  judgement  lived  in  Josiah's  time.  Bishop  Harvey  iden- 
tifies him  with  the  Deuteronomist.  The  two  views  are  easily 
reconciled,  if,  as  Bishop  Colenso  has  shown,  "  the  Deutero- 
nomist was  Jeremiah  himself"  ^  The  fact  of  this  Deuterts- 
nomistic  revision  removes  many  difficulties  which  press  on 
readers  who  regard  the  whole  narrative  as  the  composition  of 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  5.  '^  Ib.-^.w.  ^  lb.  p.  I2> 


664  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

a  single  historian.  It  explains  the  shocking  contrast  between 
the  devout  advice  to  Solomon  put  into  David's  mouth  by  the 
Deuteronomist,  and  the  bloody  suggestions  of  kingcraft  with 
reference  to  Joab  and  Shimei  in  the  older  narrative.^  The 
insertions  and  additions  thus  made  to  the  original  story  in  the 
Books  of  Kings  are  traced  by  the  Bishop  with  wonderful 
patience  and  skill,  to  the  immense  benefit  of  all  who  do  not 
care  for  edification  derived  from  unintelligible  or  impossible 
narratives.  The  difficulties  thus  removed  have  been  caused 
by  efforts  to  whitewash  or  exalt  the  character  of  personages 
in  the  history.  According  to  the  Deuteronomist,  Solomon 
fell  into  idolatry,  and  multiplied  his  wives,  in  his  old  age.  In 
the  older  record  there  is  no  sign  of  the  early  piety  from  which 
he  is  supposed  to  have  declined. 

"It  fact,  it  is  clear,"  the  Bishop  says,  "  that  he  must  have 
married  Naamah  the  Ammonitess,  the  mother  of  Rehoboam, 
in  David's  life-time,  if  Solomon  reigned  forty  years,  and 
Rehoboam  was  forty-one  years  old  when  he  began  to  reign. 
He  doubtless  married  this  heathen  wife  .  .  .  with  David's 
consent ;  and  probably,  while  still  young,  added  many 
more  such  heathen  wives  to  this  one, — in  all  which  there  is 
nothing  surprising,  since  the  Deuteronomistic  laws  which 
forbid  such  marriages  were  not  yet  written.  ...  In  short, 
here  we  have  another  striking  instance  of  the  manner  in 
which  the  history  of  Israel  is  rendered  perplexed  and 
contradictory  by  later  additions  which  have  been  supposed 
to  be  portions  of  the  original  narrative."^ 

The  authorship  of  these  books  (the  work  which  has  brought 
them  into  their  present  shape)  may  be  ascribed,  in  the  Bishop's 
belief,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word,  to  Jeremiah, 

"  whose  hand  may  be  traced,  not  merely, '  selecting,  collecting, 
modernising,'  but  writing  history  throughout  ; "  ^ 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  13.  ^  lb.  p.  41.  ^  lb.  p.  45. 


1879-  THE  PENTATEUCH  :    ITS  GROWTH.  665 

and  in  truth,  when  we  see  brought  together  the  whole  work 
of  this  earnest  and  devoted  servant  of  God,  we  stand  amazed 
at  his  energy  and  perseverance.  His  hand  is  seen  almost 
everywhere,  and  (whatever  judgement  our  notions  of  literary 
honesty  may  lead  us  to  form  of  him)  always  with  the  same 
purpose  of  weakening  and  crushing  superstition,'  and  raising 
his  countrymen  to  higher  and  purer  thoughts  of  God.  But 
everywhere,  also,  he  had  something  to  work  upon,  and  he  often 
refers  to  older  records,  some  of  which  are  undoubtedly  em- 
bodied in  the  present  Book  of  Judges.  In  this  genuine  old 
matter,  some  of  the  most  striking  portions  of  the  book  are  not 
to  be  included.  The  vigour  and  the  beauty  of  the  song  of 
Deborah  have  led  even  critics  so  sagacious  as  Kuenen  to 
speak  of  it  as  certainly  genuine  ;  but,  as  the  Bishop  remarks, 
this  argument  would  establish  the  genuineness  of  Macaulay's 
Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  or,  at  least,  of  some  ancient  source 
from  which  they  were  translated.^  This  song  certainly  points 
to  the  golden  age  of  Hebrew  literature,  in  David's  time,  and 
the  fact  that  its  opening  verses  are  almost  verbally  identical 
with  those  of  the  68th  Psalm  cannot  be  disputed.  It  is 
certain  that  one  of  these  passages  has  been  copied  from  the 
other,  and  it  was  the  Bishop's  belief  that  the  Psalm  must  be 
the  older  composition.^ 

But  this  song  of  Deborah,  although  brought  down  to  a  time 
later  than  that  of  the  6Sth  Psalm,  still  describes  a  condition 
of  society  entirely  different  from  that  which  the  chronicler 
would  have  us  suppose  was  then  already  ancient.  It  names 
all  the  other  tribes  except  Judah  and  Simeon,  but  makes  not 
even  an  allusion  to  the  tribe  of  Levi  or  the  Aaronic  priest- 
hood, to  the  ark  or  to  the  tabernacle.  Nor  throughout  the 
book  is  there  any  sign  of  the  priests  or  Levites  acting  as 
judges  (in  accordance  with  Deuteronomy  xvii.  S-i  3).  Phinehas 
is  indeed  once  mentioned,  but  this  is  an  interpolated  passage 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  79.  -  /<^.  p.  81  ;  see  also  above,  p.  539. 


€66  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

belonging  most  probably  to  the  later  legislation  ;  and,  as  the 
Bishop  remarks,  if  so  eminent  a  person  was  really  then  living, 
it  is  strange  that  there  is  no  sign  of  his  activity  in  Deborah's 
song,  or  in  any  other  part  of  the  book.^  Of  Levites,  the  only  two 
mentioned  are  homeless  vagabonds.  The  story  of  Jephthah 
points  indubitably  to  a  time  during  which  human  sacrifices 
were  neither  rare  nor  reprobated.^  This  of  itself  would  not 
go  for  much,  for  prophet  after  prophet  down  to  the  time  of  the 
Captivity  mourns  over  the  slaughter  of  first-borns  offered  to 
Moloch  ;  but  although  sacrifices  of  adults  were  sometimes 
made,  the  holocausts  were  no  doubt  generally  of  infants,  and 
the  burning  of  Jephthah's  daughter  would  point  therefore  to 
a  somewhat  earlier  age.  The  absurd  notion*  that  she  was  left 
to  live,  but  condemned  to  perpetual  virginity,  really  deserves 
no  notice.*^  The  idea  that  women  were  so  devoted  in  Israel 
is  a  mere  assumption.  Whenever  women  are  mentioned  in 
connexion  with  the  service  of  the  sanctuary,  their  functions 
are  strictly  those  of  the  Hierodouloi  of  Corinth. 

For  the  due  understanding  of  the  Hebrew  history  it  is  a 
most  unfortunate  thing  that  the  words  Elohim  and  Jehovah 
should  not  have  been  retained,  wherever  they  occur,  without 
translation  in  the  English  version.  The  words  "  God  "  and 
"  Lord  "  convey  to  us  no  contrast,  and  no  very  definite  dis- 
tinction ;  and  by  the  substitution  of  these  words  the  story  of 
the  Book  of  Ruth  becomes  strangely  indistinct.  That  book,  as 
showing  no  acquaintance  with  the  Deuteronomistic  legislation, 
must  be  older  than  the  age  of  Josiah,  and  it  belongs  to  a  time 
when  religion  was  still  strictly  local.  Thus,  Naomi  takes  it  for 
granted  that  Orpah  in  going  back  to  her  people  will  return  to 
her  Elohim,  while  Ruth  declares  that  Naomi's  people  shall  be 
her  people,  and  therefore  Naomi's  Elohim  her  Elohim.^  The 
Elohim  of  Israel  is  a  national  deity,  in  no  other  way  distin- 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  86.  ^  gee  above,  p.  607. 

3  Pentateuch^  Part  VII.  p.  93.  *  lb.  p.  106. 


1 879-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  667 

guished  from  the  Elohim  of  the  nations  round  about,  A  few, 
a  very  few,  rose  above  this  behef  to  the  conception  of  a  Divine 
Ruler  ordering  and  sustaining  all  things  by  the  word  of  His 
power  ;  but  the  idea  that  the  Semitic  nations  were  marked  by 
any  special  monotheistic  tendencies,  while  the  tendency  of  the 
Aryan  races  was  to  polytheism,  is  the  merest  superstition.  It 
is  an  assumption  which  goes  in  the  teeth  of  facts,  and  simply 
reverses  the  truth. 

The  book  which  bears  the  name  of  Samuel  points  to  a  state 
of  society  in  every  way  unlike  that  which  is  depicted  by  the 
chronicler  as  existing  in  his  day,  Eli  and  his  two  sons 
appear  to  have  been  the  only  priests  at  Shiloh.  Here  there 
was  a  house  of  Jehovah,  which  is  called  the  tent  of  meeting  ; 
but  as  it  had  door-posts  and  doors  it  cannot  have  been  the 
tent  described  in  Exodus  xxvi.-xxxvi.  In  this  building 
Samuel  slept,  contrary  to  the  spirit,  if  not  to  the  letter,  of 
the  ordinance  in  Numbers,^  and,  contrary  also  to  the  Law,  the 
lamp  was  allowed  to  go  out.  The  song  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Hannah  belongs  to  a  later  time.  The  idea  of  a  kingdom, 
according  to  the  story,  was  not  conceived  till  Samuel  was  an 
old  man  ;  but  in  this  song  Jehovah  is  spoken  of  as  exalting  the 
horn  of  his  anointed.^  The  comparison  is  forced  upon  us  with 
the  songs  of  Zacharias  and  of  Simeon,  and  the  Magnificat  of 
the  Virgin  Mary.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  of  these  three  songs 
the  first  is  a  magnificent  ordination  hymn,  in  which  the  child  is 
a  young  man  admitted  to  the  holy  and  blessed  work  of  the 
prophetical  office  ;  the  second  an  expression  of  thankfulness 
from  one  who  has  been  permitted  to  see  the  accomplishment 
of  some  special  Divine  work ;  the  third  an  utterance  expand- 
ing the  thought  that  God  resists  the  proud,  and  gives  grace  to 
the  humble.  The  whole  narrative  of  the  catastrophe  in  Eli's 
family  was,  in  the  Bishop's  belief,  written  in  Solomon's  time, 
with  the  view  of  accounting  for  the  violent  expulsion  of 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  116.  -  lb.  p.  117. 


668  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

Abiathar  to  make  way  for  Zadok.^  The  doom  pronounced  on 
Eli's  house  was  certainly  not  fulfilled.  As  Eli  died  when  his 
two  sons  were  cut  off,  those  of  his  house  who  survived  that 
event  cannot  have  "  consumed  his  eyes,  and  grieved  his  heart ;" 
nor  did  Abiathar,  one  of  his  descendants,  and  part  therefore 
of  the  "  increase  of  his  house,"  die  in  his  prime,  since  he  was 
David's  high  priest  during  all  his  reign. 

The  Second  Book  of  Samuel  knows  as  little,  seemingly,  as 
the  First,  of  that  exaltation  of  the  priests  and  Levites  which 
in  the  later  legislation  and  the  books  of  Chronicles  is  repre- 
sented as  having  been  already  achieved  in  the  Mosaic  age. 
The  contradictions  and  impossibilities  thus  introduced  into 
the  narrative  are  disentangled  by  the  Bishop  in  the  eighth 
chapter  of  his  concluding  Part.  In  the  following  chapter  he 
carries  on  the  scrutiny  through  the  First  Book  of  Kings,  and 
with  like  results.  Solomon  dismisses  Abiathar  to  the  city  of 
Anathoth,  and  to  his  field  there  ;  and  by  Jeremiah  Anathoth 
is  mentioned  as  a  priestly  city.  But  this  is  no  proof  that  the 
system  of  Levitical  cities  existed  in  this  or  any  other  age  ;  for 
Nob  (i  Samuel  xxii.  19)  was  also  a  city  of  priests,  yet  was  no 
Levitical  city.-  Nor  must  we  fail  to  note  that  Solomon  expels 
the  aged  high  priest  and  puts  Zadok  in  his  place  "  as  coolly 
as  he  puts  Benaiah  in  the  place  of  Joab." 

From  the  matter  contributed  by  the  Deuteronomist  the 
general  story  of  Elijah  and  Elisha  must  be  separated,  as 
containing 

"  so  many  miraculous  stories,  many  of  them  of  singular 
extravagance." 

No  trace  of  such  a  style,  the  Bishop  remarks, 

"appears  even  in  the  exaggerated  accounts  by  the  Deutero- 
nomist's  hand  of  Solomon's  wisdom  and  magnificence, 
much  less  in  the  more  sober  historical  accounts  of  either 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  119.  2  /^  p   j^g 


i879.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  669 

the  earlier,  or  the  later  kings,  where  the  only  miracle 
recorded  is  that  of  the  shadow  going  backward  on  the 
sun-dial — and  this  is  merely  a  copy  of  Isaiah  xxxviii.  7,  8."  ^ 

When  we  reach  the  time  of  Hezekiah,  we  still  find  a  state 
of  things  wholly  unlike  the  pictures  of  the  chronicler.  When 
that  king  wishes  for  the  help  of  Isaiah,  he  sends  to  him 

"  Shebna  who  was  over  the  house,  and  Eliakim  the  scribe, 
and  the  elders  of  the  priests  ;  " 

but  nothing  is  said  about  the  high  priest,  though  he  must 
have  been  included  amongst  these  elders,  and  they  are  all 
placed  here  below  the  civil  officers,  and  are  not  named  at  all 
as  present  at  the  conference  with  Rabshakeh.- 

The  Second  Book  of  Kings  brings  us  to  events  in  which 
Jeremiah  was  personally  and  closely  concerned.  Bishop  Lord 
A.  Harvey  notices  it  as  remarkable  that  this  prophet  is  never 
once  named  in  the  history  of  the  later  kings  of  Judah,  though 
he  filled  so  prominent  a  place  in  their  reigns. 

"  This  is  indeed,"  Bishop  Colenso  adds,  "  a  very  strong  addi- 
tional proof  of  the  fact  that  we  owe  the  Books  of  Kings  to 
his  authorship,  since  no  other  writer  could  possibly  have 
passed  over  in  utter  silence  so  important  a  personage,  more 
especially  when  other  prophets,  Abijah,  Jehu,  Micaiah, 
Jonah,  besides  Elijah,  Elisha,  and  Isaiah,  are  mentioned  by 
name  in  the  history." 

But  it  was  just  at  this  time  that  the  Book  of  the  Law  was 
found  in  the  Temple  ;  and  he  must  have  felt  that  a  hundred 
questions  would,  either  sooner,  or  in  the  dim  future  of  the 
ages,  be  raised  about  this  wonderful  incident.  On  the  tradi- 
tionary view,  as  Bishop  Colenso  remarks,  the  event  is 
amazing.  How  came  Hilkiah  not  to  have  found  it  sooner? 
The    book  was    not    brought    to    light   by    reason    of    any 

^  Pentaictich,  Part  VII.  p.  180.  2  /^  p  201. 


670  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

disturbance  caused  by  repairs  in  the  Temple,  for  these  were 
not  yet  begun.  Why,  again,  should  Huldah  be  consulted  in- 
stead of  Jeremiah  }  And  why  should  not  the  latter  be  one  of 
the  deputation  sent  to  inquire  of  Jehovah  about  the  matter  1 

"  The  whole,  of  course,  is  intelligible  enough,  if  Jeremiah  him- 
self was  the  writer  of  the  book,  and  kept  himself  out  of 
the  way — at  Anathoth,  perhaps — while  the  first  news  of  the 
discovery  transpired  ;  though  we  may  believe  that  he  includes 
himself  among  the  'priests  and  prophets'  in  whose  ears  Josiah 
read  the  contents  of  the  book."  ^ 

But  what  was  this  book  ?  The  question  has  been  answered 
already.^  But  Bishop  Harvey,  who  had  given  up  the  chrono- 
logy in  the  text  of  the  Books  of  Kings  as  erroneous  and 
misleading,  and  had  made  other  admissions  wholly  opposed  to 
all  the  traditional  notions,  suddenly  turns  round  and  asks  us 
to  believe  that  it  was  the  autograph  cop}-  not  merely  of 
Deuteronomy,  but  of  the  whole  Pentateuch  written  by  Moses. 
The  fact,  he  adds,  cannot  be  proved  ;  but 

"  it  seems  probable  that  it  was,  from  the  place  where  it  was 
found,  viz.  in  the  Temple,  and  from  its  not  having  been 
discovered  before,  but  being  only  brought  to  light  on  the 
occasion  of  the  repairs  ;  and  from  the  discoverer  being  the 
high  priest  himself  it  seems  natural  to  conclude  that  the 
particular  part  of  the  Temple  where  it  was  found  was  one 
not  usually  frequented,  or  ever,  by  any  but  the  high  priest. 
Such  a  place  exactly  was  the  one  where  we  know  the  original 
copy  of  the  Law  was  deposited  by  command  of  Moses,  viz. 
by  the  side  of  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant,  within  the  vail,  as 
we  learn  from  Deuteronom}-  xxxi.  9,  26." 

This  is  pitiable  indeed.     The  history  of  the  Kings  in  the 
reign  of  Josiah  brings  before  us  the  discovery  of  a  book  under 
very  astonishing  circumstances  ;    and,  for  the  fact  that  the 
^  Pentateuch.  Part  \'II.  p.  205.  -  See  pp.  547,  628,  et  seq. 


1 879-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  671 

book  ought  to  be  in  a  certain  place,  we  are  referred,  not  to 
any  collateral  corroborative  evidence,  but  solely  to  an  injunc- 
tion given  in  the  book  itself.  But  what  is  involved  in  Bishop 
Harvey's  supposition  ?  He  holds  it  likely — in  other  words,  he 
believes,  or  he  professes  to  believe  (for  otherwise  it  would  not 
be  worth  while  to  take  the  likelihood  into  account) — that  it 
was  the  autograph  copy  of  Moses,  not  only  of  Deuteronomy, 
but  of  the  whole  Pentateuch.  The  book  is  spoken  of  as  one 
whole  ;  and  of  this  book,  when  it  is  read  to  him,  the  King, 
with  grief  and  dismay,  confesses  his  entire  ignorance.  He 
had  neither  seen  it  before,  nor  heard  of  it  ;  he  is  simply  amazed 
at  the  fact  of  its  existence,  and  the  more  so  as  it  spoke  of 
impending  judgements  for  the  breach  of  laws  and  rules  of  the 
issuing  of  which  he  was  altogether  unaware.  There  is  not  a 
Vv'ord  to  show  that  he  was  acquainted  with  one  part  of  it, 
and  not  with  the  rest.  We  are  to  suppose  then  that  the 
whole  of  the  Pentateuch  had  been  written  by  Moses,  and  that 
he  had  left  an  autograph  copy  of  it.  We  are  to  suppose,, 
further,  that  the  whole  of  the  Pentateuch  had  been  lost.  In 
truth,  there  is  no  escaping  from  this  conclusion.  For  let  us 
admit  Bishop  Harvey's  belief  to  be  right,  and  what  must  have 
followed  .''  If  the  early  history  of  the  human  race,  if  the  lives 
of  the  Patriarchs,  if  the  sojourn  in  Egypt,  if  the  religious, 
ecclesiastical,  and  civil  law  styled  Mosaic,  were  known  to  the 
Israelites  down  to  the  time  of  josiah,  then  unquestionably 
the  first  four  books  of  the  Pentateuch  were  known  to  them. 
What,  under  these  circumstances,  must  have  been  the  language 
of  Hilkiah  and  of  Shaphan  }  If  they  had  a  spark  of  common 
honesty,  if  they  were  not  knaves  or  fools,  must  they  not 
have  said — 

"  We  have  found  in  the  Temple  a  manuscript  which  contains 
all  the  books  of  Moses  already  in  our  hands,  but  which  has 
also  another  book  of  which  we  know  nothing,  have  seen 
nothing,  and  have  heard  nothing  "  } 


672  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 


Had  they  taken  to  Josiah  an  autograph  of  tJie  ivJiole 
Pentateuch^  what  must  he  have  said,  as  Shaphan  began  with 
the  first  chapter  and  read  on  with  wearying  persistency  to  the 
end  of  Numbers — a  task  not  of  hours  but  of  days  ?  As 
the  familiar  words  fell  upon  his  ear,  must  he  not  haxe 
said — 

"Why  do  you  read  me  all  this  ?     We  know  it  all,  and  should 
have  acted  upon  it  all  already." 

If  Bishop  Harv^ey  puts  any  faith  at  all  in  the  story  (and  the 
worst  of  it  is  that  language  such  as  his  leaves  us  in  doubt 
upon  the  point),  he  must  allow  that,  whatever  the  book  was, 
it  was  read  through  by  Shaphan  at  a  sitting,  and  its  words 
came  to  the  King  with  the  force  of  an  electrical  shock. 
Shaphan  read  "  the  book,"  the  whole  book,  and  the  King 
rent  his  clothes.  But,  on  the  supposition  of  Bishop  Harvey's 
notion  being  true,  this  is  by  no  means  all.  Let  us  allow  that 
"  the  book  "  (only  one  book  is  spoken  of j  was  "  the  Pentateuch." 
Then  how  long  had  the  whole  Pentateuch  been  lost }  For  a 
space  of  time  nearly  equivalent  to  that  which  has  passed  over 
England  since  the  days  of  the  Norman  Conquest.  During  all 
these  centuries,  if  the  written  law  and  history  had  been  lost, 
as  Bishop  Harvey  holds  that  they  were,  the  Hebrews  had  had 
nothing  but  oral  tradition  to  trust  to — the  tradition  of  jealous 
and  disunited  tribes,  the  tradition  of  severed  and  hostile 
kingdoms.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Tetrateuch  had  not 
been  lost,  and  only  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  was  found  by 
Hilkiah  in  the  Temple,  then  how  with  any  sense  of  truthful- 
ness could  Josiah  have  spoken  as  he  is  said  to  have  spoken  .' 
The  earlier  books  may  present  to  us  no  language  so  magni- 
ficent, so  heart-stirring,  and  so  touching,  as  that  of  the  Book 
of  Deuteronomy ;  but,  so  long  as  he  had  these  books,  how 
could  he,  on  hearing  the  new  book,  have  expressed  such 
surprise,  anxiety,  and  dismay  ?     Is  there  one  single  injunction. 


1879.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  673 

one  single  duty,  on  which  stress  is  laid  in  Deuteronomy,  which 
is  not  set  forth  also  in  the  other  books  ?  There  is  not 
one.  If  we  dare  to  say  that  they  possessed  the  Pentateuch, 
and  that  they  paid  no  heed  to  it,  we  plunge,  not  into  the  mire 
of  folly,  but  into  the  Serbonian  bog  of  falsehood.  It  would 
follow  then  that  all  the  upright  judges,  all  the  good  kings,  all 
the  God-fearing  prophets,  had,  with  one  consent,  treated  the 
words  and  the  writings  of  their  great  and  venerated  lawgiver 
with  contempt,  and  had  done  so  systematically  for  six,  seven, 
or  eight  centuries. 

In  the  other  books  there  were  charges  enough  to  think  on 
the  Divine  commandments  to  do  them  ;  promises  enough 
of  blessings  which  should  follow  obedience  ;  and  warnings 
enough  of  punishments  which  would  be  the  consequence  of 
violating  them.  Is  it  possible,  is  it  conceivable,  that  upright 
judges,  godly  kings,  conscientious  prophets  and  teachers,  would 
thus  neglect  books  which  it  was  their  duty,  and  could  not  fail 
to  be  their  delight,  to  read  and  to  know  thoroughly  }  The 
inference  is  irresistible.  They  seem  to  us  to  have  neglected 
these  laws  and  to  have  contemned  these  books  because  in 
their  day  these  books  had  not  been  written,  and  these  laws 
had  not  been  framed.  In  other  words,  this  fact  alone  estab- 
lishes triumphantly  the  whole  work  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 
The  other  theory  is  absurd,  is  monstrous.  Bishop  Harvey 
cannot  believe,  no  man  can  really  believe,  that  the  whole 
religious,  moral,  social,  ecclesiastical,  political  legislation  con- 
tained in  the  Tetrateuch  was  put  together,  under  the  most 
solemn  of  sanctions,  only  to  be  forthwith  lost  and  never 
seen  or  heard  of  again  for  some  eight  hundred  years.  The 
high  priest  alone,  it  is  said,  could  discover  it  in  the  days  of 
Josiah,  because  he  alone  had  the  right  of  entering  the  place 
where  it  was  found  ;  but,  in  the  days  of  Moses,  the  Levites,  it 
would  seem,  if  we  are  to  believe  the  Deuteronomist,  were 
competent  to  handle  it,  and  were  bidden  to  place  it  "  in  the 
VOL.    I.  XX 


674  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

side  of  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  of  Jehovah  Elohim  " ;  and  we 
are  to  suppose  that  these  Levites  did  so — Levites  belonging, 
according  to  the  chronicler,  to  a  powerful  tribe  invested  with 
the  most  sacred  privileges,  charged  with  the  most  solemn 
functions — Levites  who,  instead  of  speaking  of  this  injunction 
of  the  lawgiver  to  these  tribesmen,  and  keeping  up  the 
memory  of  it  among  the  laymen  of  the  other  tribes,  forgot  all 
about  it  themselves,  and  left  the  whole  Pentateuch  to  lie  for 
century  after  century  forgotten  and  dead,  as  though  it  had 
never  been.  Nay,  according  to  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy, 
the  Levites  had  been  charged  to  place  the  book  in  the  ark 
"  that  it  may  be  there  for  a  witness  against  thee,"  and  this 
purpose  of  the  lawgiver,  it  follows,  was  frustrated  as  soon  as 
he  had  made  an  end  of  writing  the  words  of  the  law  in  his 
book.  But  we  will  suppose  that  the  whole  Pentateuch  was 
preserved  through  the  life-time  of  Joshua.  The  dense  ignor- 
ance of  the  days  of  the  Judges,  and  all  the  phenomena  ot 
that  time,  are  proof  enough  that  neither  rulers  nor  people 
were  then  acquainted  with  it.  Even  thus,  can  we  go  on  to 
suppose  that  during  all  those  ages  no  memory  remained  what- 
ever of  the  book  or  books  which  had  been  written  ;  that  not  the 
faintest  tradition  survived  of  the  righteous  law  under  which 
they  should  have  been  living  ;  that  neither  judges,  nor  kings, 
nor  prophets  had  ever  had  the  least  wish  to  recover  it,  the 
smallest  thought  of  searching  for  it  ;  that  during  all  the 
changes  and  wanderings  which  the  ark  had  undergone,  and  in 
spite  of  all  the  ransackings  to  which  the  various  tabernacles 
had  been  subjected,  no  one  had  ever  noticed,  no  one  had  ever 
seen,  this  bulky  and  once  precious  manuscript,  as  it  lay  like 
lumber  in  the  case  to  which  the  Levites  had  committed  it 
hundreds  of  years  before  }  The  whole  story  speaks  for  itself 
Joshua,  at  least,  inherited  the  full  spirit  of  Moses.  He,  at  least, 
surely  obeyed  the  precepts  of  his  master  :  he  knew  therefore 
that  the  change  spoken  of  by  the  Deuteronomist  would  come, 


1879.  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  GROWTH.  675 

that  kings  would  reign  in  Israel,  and  that,  by  the  special 
charge  of  Moses,  each  king  was  with  his  own  hand  to  make  a 
copy  of  the  book  discovered  afterwards  by  Hilkiah  in  the 
Temple.  Surely  he  at  least  would  make  due  provision  for 
insuring  that  the  books  could  be  so  handed  down  as  to  enable 
them  to  act  on  that  command.  Of  such  provision  there  is  not 
the  faintest  trace.  Of  the  disingenuousness  which  may  be 
supposed  to  mark  the  dealings  of  Jeremiah  or  Hilkiah  enough 
has  been  said  already  ;  but  if,  in  order  to  acquit  them  of  that 
which  in  their  eyes  was  probably  no  offence  at  all,  and  on 
which,  perhaps,  they  never  bestowed  a  thought,  we  multiply 
absurdities,  contradictions,  and  impossibilities,  this  is  not  to 
exercise  the  office  of  the  critic  or  the  judge.  It  is  simply 
to  lie. 

It  is  time  that  this  play-acting  should  come  to  an  end.  We 
must  look  at  facts  as  they  are.  Whether  it  were  the  Tetra- 
teuch,  or  whether  it  was  only  the  one  Book  of  Deuteronomy, 
the  discovery  of  this  book,  on  the  supposition  of  its  being  the 
autograph  of  Moses  himself,  was  a  circumstance  which  would 
permanently  and  profoundly  impress  the  imagination  of  such 
a  man  as  Jeremiah.  If  this  discovery  was  confined  to  the 
Book  of  Deuteronomy  only,  the  impression  made  on  him 
would,  if  possible,  be  even  deeper,  for  this  would  be  just  that 
setting  forth  of  the  Divine  Law,  in  its  life-giving  and  healing 
aspects,  which  he  most  longed  for.  In  the  Tetrateuch  the 
ceremonial  enactments  might  be  held  to  weigh  down,  or  to 
put  out  of  sight,  the  higher  matters  of  justice,  judgement, 
and  mercy ;  but  this  could  not  be  said  of  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy,  Yet,  if  we  are  to  judge  him  from  his  own 
words,  the  event  made  on  him  no  impression  at  all.  In  his 
prophecies  he  never  appeals  to  this  Book  of  the  Law,  and, 
except  in  the  one  Passover  held  after  its  discovery,  Josiah 
himself  seems  to  have  made  no  effort  to  carry  out  its  direc- 
tions.    It  is  the  same  with  the  prophet  Ezekiel.     He,  therefore, 

X  X  2 


676  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xir. 

as  well  as  Josiah,  learnt  after  a  while  the  real  history  of 
the  book,  which  was,  indeed,  the  result  of  the  effort  made  to 
bring  about  the  reformation  of  a  most  horrible  state  of  things. 
Nor  can  we  presume  to  say  that  it  was  unsuccessful.  Many 
efforts  are  not  fruitless,  of  which  no  results  may  be  manifest 
for  a  long  series  of  generations.  It  is  our  own  fault,  if  of  the 
condition  of  the  Temple  in  the  time  of  the  Kings  we  choose 
to  frame  pictures  which  do  not  answer  to  the  real  facts.  The 
list  of  abominations  there  practised,  as  given  by  Jeremiah 
himself,  should  be  enough  to  remove  all  such  illusions,  and  to 
disabuse  the  minds  of  all  of  any  notion  that  the  Temple  was 
a  pure  sanctuar)-, 

"  thronged  with  holy  priests  and  faithful  Levites  and  multi- 
tudes of  pious  worshippers,  resounding  continually  with 
sacred  melodies,  with  psalms  and  hymns  and  spiritual 
songs."  ^ 

The  ritual  there  practised  was  purely  pagan.  There,  at  the 
north  gate  of  the  House  of  Jehovah,  the  women  wept  for 
Tammuz — that  is, 

"  for  the  dead  Adonis  (Yahve)  whom  they  will  hail  on  the 
third  day  as  having  come  to  life  again." - 

There  the  twent}--five  men  between  the  porch  and  the  altar 
worshipped  the  sun  towards  the  east  ;  there  the  moon- 
goddess  Ashera  was  adored  under  the  symbol  of  a  stock,  or 
pole,  or  trunk,  which  could  become  a  serpent,  and  from  a 
serpent  revert  again  to  the  form  of  a  tree  ;  and  there  was 
kept  up  all  the  apparatus  of  obscene  rites  which  mark  the 
ancient  mythical  religious  systems  of  all  countries. 

It  is  hard  to  imagine  that  any  popular  delusions  could  be 
more  thoroughly  exposed  than  those  which,  before  the  Bishop 
undertook   his   work,    flourished    in    this    country  as   to   the 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  V'll.  p.  216.  -  lb.  p.  219. 


1879.  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  677 

history  of  the  Pentateuch.  These  delusions,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, were  asserted  by  Mr.  Maurice  to  be  truths  ;  and,  if 
these  were  removed,  we  could  not,  he  contended,  speak  of 
God  as  a  smiter  of  tyrants,  as  a  deliverer  of  the  oppressed, 
as  a  God  of  freedom,  order,  and  justice.  The  Bishop's  work 
was  indeed  done  effectually.  More  corroborative  evidence 
might  be  adduced  for  his  conclusions  ;  but  the  conclusions 
could  not  in  their  main  lines  be  overthrown,  and  the  strength- 
ening evidence  was  not  lacking.  They  are  borne  out  by  an 
examination  of  all  the  prophetical  books.  The  prophecies  of 
Amos,  of  the  first  Zechariah,  and  of  Hosea  make  no  re- 
ference whatever  to  the  Ten  Commandments,  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy,  or  the  Levitical  legislation  of  the  Pentateuch. 
In  Hosea,  an  Ephraimitish  prophet, 

^'  there  is  no  allusion  whatever  to  the  ark  as  the  centre  of  the 
religious  feelings  of  all  Israel,  or  to  the  existence  of  the 
Aaronic  priesthood,  or  to  the  duty  having  been  laid  by 
express  Divine  command  upon  all  male  Israelites  to  go  up 
to  Jerusalem  for  the  three  great  feasts,"  ^ 

or  for  other  purposes.  The  same  remark  applies  to  the  earlier 
Isaiah,-  to  Micah,^  Nahum,-*  and  Zephaniah.'^  Of  Jeremiah 
enough  may,  perhaps,  have  been  said  already  ;  but,  as  throw- 
ing light  on  the  morality,  the  very  thought  of  which  so  shocked 
Mr.  Maurice,  we  must  not  forget  the  prophet's  own  narrative 
as  given  in  the  thirty-eighth  chapter  (24—27).  Here  Zedekiah, 
the  king,  orders  him  to  prevaricate,  or  rather  to  tell  a  down- 
right falsehood  ;  and  the  prophet  follows  his  directions.  There 
is  nothing  in  this  to  disturb  our  judgement.  We  can  surely 
gauge  the  measure  of  veracity  reached  by  Asiatics,  and,  we 
may  also  say,  by  Europeans,  to  say  nothing  of  Englishmen. 
But 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  241.  -  lb.  p.  250. 

3  lb.  p.  255.  "  lb.  p.  256.  ^  lb.  p.  258. 


678  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap,  xil 

"  it  is  very  plain  that  Jeremiah  knew  nothing  of  the  Levitical 
legislation  of  the  Pentateuch,  with  its  multitude  of  com- 
mands '  concerning  burnt-ofifering  and  sacrifice.' "  ^ 

To  the  Ten  Commandments  he  never  refers,  probably 
because  the  framing  of  them  in  both  forms  was  his  own  work. 
In  the  same  way  Habakkuk  betrays  no  acquaintance  with 
the  Ten  Commandments  or  the  Levitical  legislation  ;  but  he 
might  refer  to  the  Book  of  the  Law  which  in  his  time  had 
been  found  in  the  Temple. 

"  There  are,  in  fact,"  says  the  Bishop,  "  some  remarkable  points 
of  resemblance  between  Habakkuk  (iii.)  and  Deuteronomy 
(xxxiii.),  which  suggest  the  possibility  that  the  Deutero- 
nomist  (Jeremiah)  may  have  received  and  adopted  this 
blessing  of  Moses  from  the  hand  of  his  contemporary."  ^ 

Joel,  however,  knows  nothing  of  either  Deuteronomy,  the 
Levitical  legislation,  or  the  Decalogue.  With  Ezekiel  we 
notice  a  change. 

"  He  insists  very  strenuousl)'  on  the  observance  of  the  Sab- 
bath, which  for  the  exiles  was  a  point  of  great  importance, 
since  it  helped  to  keep  alive  in  them  a  sense  of  religion,  when 
at  a  distance  from  the  Holy  Land,  and  deprived  of  the  Temple 
services.  Ezekiel  was  a  priest,  and  in  spite  of  his  strong 
and  healthy  moral  sense,  or  along  with  it,  he  shows  a 
marked  tendency  towards  the  practice  of  a  minute  ritualism  ; 
but  even  his  directions  for  ritual  seem  to  show  that  he  was 
not  acquainted  with  those  in  Exodus  xxv.,  &c.  If  he  had 
these  chapters  before  him,  with  their  alleged  Divine  direc- 
tions for  the  construction  and  arrangement  of  the  sanctuary 
and  its  vessels,  not  only  would  they  have  answered  his 
purpose  effectually,  but  he  would  hardly  have  departed  from 
them  so  freely  as  he  docs." 

Further,  his  very  denunciations  of  his  countrymen   for  their 

idolatry  show  that  they  had  not  been  trained  in  the  so-called 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  266.  -  lb.  p.  270. 


1879.  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  679 


Mosaic  monotheism.  According  to  him  the  progeny  of 
Abraham  and  Jacob,  the  chosen  people  of  Jehovah,  had  ahvays 
been  idolatrous.^ 

"  There  never  was  a  time  .  .  .  when  they  were  not  a  rebellious 
house,  an  idolatrous  people.  It  need  hardly  be  said  that 
this  thoroughly  agrees  with  the  conclusions  to  which  we 
have  been  led  by  the  closer  study  of  the  Pentateuch  and 
the  historical  books  of  the  Bible."  ^ 

In  the  prophecies  of  the  second  Zechariah  and  of  Obadiah, 
and  in  the  Book  of  Lamentations,  there  is  neither  reference 
nor  allusion  to  the  Levitical  legislation,  to  Deuteronomy,  or 
to  the  Decalogue.  The  prophecies  of  the  second  Isaiah 
belong  to  a  time  not  long  before  the  end  of  the  Babylonish 
captivity, 

"  when  the  triumphant  career  of  Cyrus  distinctly  marked  him 
out,  in  the  writer's  view,  and  in  that  of  his  fellow-exiles,  as 
the  conqueror  of  Babylon.  This  prophet  was,  therefore, 
subject  to  the  same  influences  as  those  under  which  Ezekiel 
prophesied  ;  but  he  was  clearly  less  imbued  with  the  priestly 
and  ceremonial  spirit.  With  him  there  is  no  special  regard 
for  the  Levitical  order.  All  Israelites  are  to  be  called 
*  priests  of  Jehovah,'  '  ministers  of  our  Elohim.'  The  true 
servants  of  Jehovah  must  be  ready  to  suffer  with,  and  for, 
and  through  their  brethren  ;  and  he  declares  the  blessed 
fruits  which  follow  from  such  a  '  taking  up  of  the  cross.' 
But  even  in  the  chapters  of  the  third  Zechariah,  written 
after  the  Captivity,  but  before  the  Temple  was  finished  in  the 
sixth  year  of  Darius,  there  is  no  reference  to  the  Decalogue 
or  the  Levitical  legislation.  To  the  Law  of  Deuteronomy 
there  may  be,  perhaps,  an  allusion  in  the  sentence  which 
speaks  of  the  Israelites  as  making  their  hearts  adamant 
so  as  not  to  hear  the  law  and  the  words  which  Jahveh 
Zebaoth  sent  through  his  Spirit  by  the  former  prophets."  ^ 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  279.  -  lb.  p.  2S0.  ^  lb.  p.  293. 


68o  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 


It  is  much  the  same  with  the  Books  of  Jonah  and  Malachi, 
a  younger  contemporary,  probably,  of  Nehemiah.  In  the 
utterances  of  the  latter  it  is  not  surprising  to 

"  find  great  stress  laid  upon  the  punctual  performance  of 
priestly  duties." 

Nor  would  there  be  anything  surprising  if  he  had 

"  referred  distinctly  to  the  Levitical  legislation,  much  of  which 
was  already  in  existence  in  his  time,  though  probably  not 
yet  published.  Nowhere,  however,  does  he  make  an}- 
allusion  to  that  legislation,  except  (possibly)  in  ii.  7,  or  to 
the  Ten  Commandments  ;  though  in  iv.,  4  he  refers  to  the 
Book  of  Deuteronomy,  which  was  now  nearly  two  centuries 
old,  reckoning  from  its  discovery  in  the  Temple  in  Josiah's 
time,  B.C.  624."  ^ 

To  the  Daniel  of  the  book  which  bears  his  name  it  might 
be  supposed  that  Ezekiel  was  referring  when  he  spoke 
of  Noah,  Daniel,  and  Job,  as  three  men  who  should  save 
their  souls  by  their  righteousness.  But  the  very  order  in 
which  the  name  occurs,  and  the  fact  that  he  is  put  forth  with 
the  other  two  as  a  model  of  righteousness, 

"  is  enough  to  show  that  the  Daniel  here  meant  must  be  some 
traditionary  character  of  a  former  age,  and  not  a  mei^ 
stripling  carried  to  Babylon  in  the  third  year  of  Jehoiakim, 
and  only  permitted  to  stand  before  Nebuchadnezzar  three 
years  afterwards — that  is,  just  before  the  time  when  Ezekiel 
himself,  then  probably  a  priest  in  mature  life,  was  carried 
away  to  Babylon."  - 

In  this  book  there  is  no  express  reference  to  the  Pentateuch, 
and  not  even  an  allusion  to  the  Decalogue. 

The  result  of  the  whole  examination  of  the  prophetical 
books  is  to  show  that  from  the  oldest  prophet,  Amos,  down- 
wards, 

^  Pentatetich,  Part  YII.  p.  297.  -  lb.  p.  298. 


1879.  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  GROWTH.  681 

"there  are  traces  of  an  acquaintance  with  incidents  in  the 
lives  of  the  Patriarchs  or  the  story  of  the  Exodus,  derived 
apparently  from  the  original  story,  though  sometimes  vary- 
ing from  it,  and  then  probably  depending  on  mere  legendary 
tradition.  But  in  no  single  passage  is  there  the  slightest 
reference  to  the  existence  of  the  Ten  Commandments, 
supposed  in  the  traditionary  view  to  have  been  graven 
originally  by  the  '  finger  of  Elohim '  upon  stones,  as  the 
basis  of  Jehovah's  covenant  with  Israel  at  Sinai.  Nor  in 
any  of  the  earlier  prophets  is  there  the  least  sign  of  an 
acquaintance  with  the  Deuteronomistic  or  Levitical  legisla- 
tion. In  Jeremiah  we  find  plain  evidence  of  a  familiarity, 
and,  indeed,  of  a  peculiar  and  intimate  relation,  in  respect 
of  views  generally,  and  language,  with  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy,  which  probably  he  himself  had  written, — but 
still  no  trace  of  the  Levitical  legislation.  In  Ezekiel  we 
first  find  indications  of  acquaintance  with  some  portions,  at 
all  events,  of  the  latter,  to  which  he  appears  to  have  him- 
self contributed.  And  in  the  post-Captivity  prophets  we 
observe  signs  of  acquaintance  with  both  these  legislations  ; 
but  only  in  Malachi,  iv.  4,  and  in  Daniel  ix.  11-13,  is  any 
mention  made  of  the  Law  of  Moses." 

Thus  again  it  is  made  plain  that  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy 
was  not  known  before  Jeremiah's  time,  but  was  well 
kifown  to  that  prophet ;  and  from  the  fact  that,  although  he 
quotes  it, 

"  he  never  appeals  to  it,  nor  even  names  it,  while  the  style  of 
his  prophecies  resembles  remarkably  that  of  Deuteronomy, 
it  can  only  be  inferred  that  he  was  himself  the  writer  of  that 
book.  ...  In  other  words,  Jeremiah  was  the  Deuteronomist, 
and  therefore  also  the  editor  or  compiler  of  the  Penta- 
teuch and  Joshua,  before  the  insertion  of  the  Levitical 
legislation." 

From  the  examination  of  the  prophetical  books  the  Bishop 
went  on  to  scrutinise  those  which  are  styled  historical.     Of 


682  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 


the  Chronicles,  and  of  the  spirit  in  which  they  were  put 
together,  something  has  been  said  ah-eady.  The  age  of  the 
chronicler  himself  cannot  be  carried  further  back  than  about 
B.C.  332,  i.e.  about  two  centuries  and  a  half  after  the  Cap- 
tivity. Nothing  is  gained  by  attempts  to  determine  all  the 
sources  from  which  he  may  have  derived  information.  For 
some  of  his  statements,  and  especially  for  some  of  his 
genealogies,  he  may  have  had  the  help  of  other  records 
besides  those  of  Samuel  and  Kings  ;  but  there  is  no  question 
that  he  had  these  latter  before  him  all  along,  and  has  fre- 
quently copied  their  language  almost  word  for  word.  These, 
however,  are  matters  of  very  minor  importance.  It  is  more 
to  the  purpose  to  note  the  mistakes  and  blunders  which  point 
out  his  incompetency  as  an  historian,  and  the  deliberate 
misrepresentation  of  facts  which  proves  that  without  corrobo- 
rative testimony  he  cannot  be  trusted  anywhere.  Thus  he 
makes  Hiram  of  Tyre  send  ships  for  Solomon  to  ports  on 
the  Red  Sea,  in  which  case  they  must  either  have  been  dragged 
across  the  isthmus  of  Suez,  or  gone  round  by  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope.  A  blunder  not  less  glaring  is  seen  in  the  state- 
ment that  Solomon's  ships  went  to  Tarshish  for  the  gathering 
of  gold,  silver,  tusks,  apes,  and  peacocks,  once  in  three  years. 
Tarshish  was  not  a  town,  but  a  region  in  Southern  Spain,  and 
the  voyage  to  and  from  Spain  would  have  taken  only  a  few 
months  ;  but,  in  fact,  the  Book  of  Kings  (i,  x.  22)  merely  says 
that  Solomon  had  at  sea  ships  of  Tarshish,  in  other  words, 
large  merchant  v^essels,  just  as  we  speak  of  Indiamen.  The 
chronicler,  knowing  nothing,  and  caring  nothing,  for  the 
geography,  has  fallen  into  a  blunder.^  In  fact,  he  does  all 
that  he  can  to  discredit  himself  He  seems  to  work  on 
more  materials  than  those  which  were  at  the  command  of 
the  writer  of  the  Books  of  Kings  ;  but  his  ostentatious  references 
to  '  the  words  of  Nathan  the  prophet,  the  prophecy  of  Ahijah 
1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  315. 


1879-  THE  PENTATEUCH:    ITS  GROWTH.  683. 

the  Shilonite,  the  visions  of  Iddo  the  seer,'  as  though  these 
were  all  independent  works,  mean  probably  nothing  more 
than  certain  sections  in  the  First  Book  of  Kings.  Having 
no  historical  conscience  to  restrain  him,  he  amplifies  at  will 
the  barest  statements  of  the  earlier  annalists.  The  simple 
announcement  that  '  there  was  war  between  Abijah  and 
Jeroboam,'  is  thus  expanded  into  the  circumstantial  tale  that 
Abijah  fought  with  400,000  warriors  against  Jeroboam,  who 
headed  no  less  a  force  than  800,000  mighty  men  of  valour. 
To  this  huge  host  he  makes  Abijah  from  the  top  of  Mount 
Zemaraim  address  a  long  speech,  though  how,  for  such  an 
address,  full  of  invective  against  the  apostasy  of  the  Israel- 
itish  kingdom,  he  Avould  get  any  hearing,  it  is  hard  indeed 
to  imagine.  They  were  not  his  own  soldiers,  and  there  is  no 
room  here  for  the  usual  resource  of  supposing  him  to  speak 
to  a  mere  deputation  of  elders  or  other  representatives. ^ 

What  little  generalship  there  was,  was  on  the  side  of 
Jeroboam,  who  places  an  ambuscade  in  the  rear  of  his  enemies. 
On  Abijah's  side  shouts  to  Jehovah  with  blowing  of  trumpets 
by  the  priests  soon  settled  the  day,  the  result  being  that  of 
Jeroboam's  army  there  fell  down  slain,  not  merely  wounded, 
500,000  chosen  men.  This  is  "  ecclesiastical  history  "  indeed, 
if  a  history  may  be  so  termed  because  it  is  spun  out  of  the 
brains  of  ecclesiastics.'- 

Except  when  he  thus  weaves  fictitious  additions  to  the 
older  narrative,  the  chronicler  is  an  almost  servile  copyist  ;, 
and  the  mere  fact  that  the  language  of  these  additions  differs 
widely  from  that  of  the  Kings  would  not  of  itself  prove  that 
these  also  were  not  derived  from  other  sources. 

"  But  these  additions  ....  betray  throughout  the  chronicler's 
own  peculiar  style." 

If  he    has    taken   them    from  another    source  he  must  have 
^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  318.  -  lb.  p.  319. 


684  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xn. 

re-written  them,  and  this  would  prove  at  least  that  he  did  not 
regard  these  sources  as  equal  in  value  to  the  history  of  the 
Kings.  More  probably,  the  Bishop  concludes,  he  had  no  such 
source  at  all.^  So  his  work  goes  on  with  the  same  wearisome 
monotony  of  invention.  Thus,  Jehoshaphat's  standing  army 
is  made  to  consist  of  1,160,000  warriors, 

"implying  a  minimum  population  of  1,480  to  the  square  mile, 
which  is  more  than  three  times  greater  than  that  of  any 
other  country  in  the  known  world." 

At  the  same  time  he  makes  this  king,  with  an  army  about 
twelve  times  as  large  as  that  of  Great  Britain,  tremble  through 
fear  of  a  motley  horde  of  invaders  who  come  from  beyond 
the  sea,  from  Edom.  "  As  for  us,"  he  is  said  to  cry  out  in  his 
disma}',  "we  know  not  what  to  do."  As  to  charges,  the 
chronicler  sticks  at  none  which  will  serve  his  own  purpose. 
Thus  he  represents  Joram  as  compelling  his  people  to  idolatry, 
whereas  from  the  story  of  the  Book  of  Kings, 

"  it  is  plain  that  they  were  of  their  own  accord  idolaters.  He 
further  describes  Joram  as  dying  by  >an  incurable  disease, 
and  as  being  buried  dishonourably,  not  in  the  sepulchres  of 
the  kings  ;  whereas  the  older  narrative  says  nothing  of  the 
illness,  and  declares  that  he  was  buried  with  his  fathers."  ^ 

It  is  impossible  to  reproduce  here  the  contradictions  in- 
volved in  the  chronicler's  method  of  dealing  with  the  story 
of  Athaliah,  which  the  Bishop  draws  out  in  full  detail  ;  nor  is 
it  necessary  to  bring  together  further  instances  of  his  mon- 
strous and  laughable  exaggerations.  It  seems  impossible  for 
him  to  be  accurate  anywhere.  In  the  Book  of  Kings,  Ahaz 
is  said  to  have  offered  his  son  as  a  burnt  sacrifice.  The 
chronicler  speaks  of  him  as  burning  his  children  generally. 
He  deals  in  the  same  way  with  Manassch,^  of  whom  he  further 

^  Pentateuch^  Part  \'IL  p.  325.  -  lb,  p.  332.         ^  lb,  p.  337. 


1 879-  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  685 

speaks  as  being  taken  captive  by  the  Assyrians,  and  carried 
in  chains  to  Babylon,  where  he  repents,  and  is  restored  to  his 
sovereignty.  After  his  return,  Manasseh  is  said  to  have 
strongly  fortified  Jerusalem,  and  put  captains  of  war  in  all 
the  fenced  cities  of  Judah.  Of  all  this  the  historian  of  the 
Books  of  Kings  knows  nothing.  The  incidents  rest  on  the 
sole  authority  of  a  man  in  whom  the  sense  of  historical  truth 
was  dead.  It  is  the  same  with  the  later  and  with  the  earlier 
kings.  On  all  that  tends  to  reflect  discredit  on  David's 
character  he  is  absolutely  silent  ;  and  the  whole  account  of  his 
preparations  for  the  building  of  the  Temple  rests,  in  the  words 
of  Graf,  "  on  an  imaginary  foundation."  ^  As  to  a  genealogy, 
it  must  be  either  an  exact  statement  of  fact,  or  it  must 
be  worthless.  The  chronicler's  genealogies  may  be  drawn 
from  other  sources  besides  the  earlier  records  ;  but,  as  they 
come  to  us,  they  rest  on  the  sole  authority  of  the  chronicler  ; 
and  "  some  portion  of  these  notices  are,"  in  Grafs  judgment, 

"  so  manifestly  stamped  with  the  character  of  being  unhis- 
torical,  that  the  value  of  most  of  them  can  only  be  judged 
by  their  agreeing  or  not  with  otherwise  credible  history  ; 
and  in  many  cases,  in  the  absence  of  such  a  test,  they  must 
remain  doubtful."  ^ 

His  numbers  are  always  vast  and  the  numeration  always 
artificial.  As  the  choristers  consisted  of  24  x  12  =  288,  so  the 
king's  body-guard  consisted  of  twelve  courses  of  24,000  men 
each.      On  this  statement  Graf  emphatically  says  that, 

"  if  anywhere,  then  certainly  in  this  passage  it  is  plain  that 
we  have  only  to  do  with  pure  fiction.  Not  only  are  the 
numbers  in  themselves  fantastic,  but  Second  Samuel  and 
First  Kings  know  nothing  whatever  of  any  such  body- 
guard. How  modest  in  contrast  appears  the  small  troop 
of  Cherethites  and  Pelethites  and  the  600  Gittites  whom 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  377.  -  lb.  p.  379. 


686  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 


David  in  his  flight  from  Absalom  sent  forward  in  advance, 
2  Samuel  xv.  i8.  Moreover,  what  a  peculiar  light  does  it 
throw  on  the  mode  of  preparing  such  imaginary  and  yet 
apparently  documental  narratives,  when  we  find  that  the 
names  are  merely  taken  from  the  beginning  of  the  list  of 
David's  heroes,  and  follow  nearly  in  the  same  order  as 
these."  1 

But  the  chronicler  is  convicted  not  of  blundering,  but  of 
downright  lying,  when  among  the  chiefs  who  took  each  his 
monthly  turn  with  his  24,000  men  at  the  court  in  Jerusalem, 
appears  Asahel,  Joab's  brother,  who  was  killed  by  Abner 
in  the  very  beginning  of  David's  reign,  while  he  still  lived  at 
Hebron.- 

Having  thus  examined  the  books  which  bear  the  chronicler's 
name,  the  Bishop  turns  to  the  Books  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah, 
which  in  their  present  form  are  due  also  to  him.  The  Bishop's 
scrutiny  is  directed  to  the  ascertainment  of  the  share  which 
the  chronicler  had  in  the  actual  composition  of  these  books  ; 
and  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  the  search  brings  to 
light  the  same  phenomena.  Thus  in  Ezra  thirty  golden 
chargers,  thirty  golden  basins,  making  up  with  the  silver 
vessels  a  total  of  5,400  gold  and  silver  vessels,  belong  to  a 
temple  which  in  King  Zedekiah's  time  had  only  one  chief 
priest,  two  second  priests,  and  three  keepers  of  the  threshold.^ 
The  genuine  passages  are  distinguished  with  but  little  diffi- 
culty, among  these  being  Ezra  iv.  9-22.  Here  we  have  no 
trace  whatever  of  the  chronicler's  style,  and  the  letters  quoted 
refer  not  to  the  building  of  the  Temple  of  which  v.  1-5  is 
speaking,  but  distinctly  to  the  building  of  the  city  walls, 
without  any  reference  or  allusion  to  the  Temple.  The  con- 
tradiction to  the  chronicler's  own  narrative  is  complete.^ 
The  true  history  comes  out  in  spite  of  his  efforts  to  hide  it. 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  385.  -  lb.  p.  386. 

3  lb.  p.  389.  *  lb.  p.  391. 


1879-  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  GROWTH.  687 

The  building  of  the  Temple  flagged  or  was  for  a  time  given 
up ;  but  that  this  delay  (of  more  than  twenty-one  years) 
should  have  been  caused  by  the  laziness  of  the  Jews  themselves, 
while  Zerubbabel  and  Joshua  were  still  living,  was 

"  very  abhorrent  to  the  chronicler's  mind.  And  he  has  tried 
to  account  for  it  by  inventing  a  series  of  hindrances  from 
the  enemies  of  Judah,  suggested,  very  probably,  by  the 
opposition  which  was  really  made  seventy  years  afterwards 
to  the  building  of  the  ivalls,  and  in  doing  this  he  has  involved 
himself  in  the  gravest  inconsistencies."  ^ 

But  these  things  gave  the  chronicler  no  trouble.  He  can 
forge  letters  from  the  Persian  king,  and  also  letters  to  him."- 
Thus, 

"  of  the  whole  Book  of  Ezra  (except  chapter  ii.)  only  the 
letters  in  iv.  9-22  appear  to  be  genuine  and  of  real  historical 
value.  The  rest  is  the  composition  of  the  chronicler,  of 
which  some  portions  are  manifestly  fictitious,  and  the  rest, 
unsupported  by  any  other  evidence,  and  partly  in  close 
connexion  with  these  fictitious  portions,  can  lay  no  claim  to 
be  regarded  as  history."  ^ 

The  examination  of  the  Book  of  Nehemiah  brings  the  Bishop 
to  the  conclusion  that  a  considerable  portion  of  it  is  the  genuine 
work  of  Nehemiah  himself,  in  which  we  may  throughout  discern 
strong  marks  of  his  character  as  an  individual,  the  rest  being 
due  to  the  chronicler, 


"  who  also  appears  to  have  borrowed  from  the  acts  of  Nehemiah 
ideas  for  his  own  more  detail 
which  he  ascribes  to  Ezra."  "^ 


ideas  for  his  own  more  detailed  accounts  of  fictitious  doings 


The  analysis  of  the  Book  of  Esther  is  not  less  instructive. 
It  is  written  to  account  for  the  origin  of  the  Jewish  festival 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  394.  -  lb.  pp.  39S-401. 

3  lb.  p.  410.  *  lb.  p.  439. 


688  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

of  Purim,  which  was  not  one  of  the  three  great  feasts  of  the 
Mosaic  Law.     The  writer 

"  has  simply  set  before  himself  the  antiquarian  purpose  of 
explaining  why  this  feast  was  called  the  feast  of  Lots,  and 
to  this  end  he  has  composed  a  romance  full  of  exaggerations, 
contradictions,  and  impossibilities,  and  breathing  a  spirit 
of  narrow  national  pride  and  bitter  hatred  against  other 
peoples." 

The  story  is  one  of  wholesale  massacre  designed  for  the 
extirpation  of  the  Jews,  and  carried  out  through  the  permis- 
sion of  the  king  b\'  the  Jews  upon  their  opponents,  of  whom 
they  slay  more  than  75,000,  though  all  fear  of  their  enemies 
was  over.     The  whole  thing  is  a  ludicrous  absurdit}'. 

"  The  edict,  showing  the  King's  pleasure,  the  Queen's  influence, 
and  Mordecai's  power,  had  been  issued  nine  months.  There 
is  no  sign  that  the  people  generally  wished  any  harm  to  the 
Jews,  or  made  any  attack  upon  them,  the  decree  for  their 
extirpation  being  ascribed  solely  to  Haman's  wrath  against 
Mordecai,  and  Haman  had  been  executed  nine  months 
before  the  decree  was  carried  out.  But  even  this,  it  seems, 
was  not  enough  to  satisfy  the  vengeance  of  Esther  and 
Mordecai,  or  rather  of  Esther  alone,  for  without  any  prompt- 
ing she  makes  a  second  request  to  the  King,  that  the  Jews 
might  be  allowed  another  day  of  butchery  ;  and  the  request 
is  granted,  and  on  the  second  day  300  more  are  killed  in 
Shushan.  ...  In  short,  the  whole  account  is  manifestly 
fabulous.  .  .  .  Indeed,  it  is  incredible  that  the  King  should 
have  issued  the  first  decree  at  the  request  of  Haman,  sup- 
ported by  a  bribe  of  10,000  talents  of  silver  (;^3, 420,000), 
ordering  the  massacre  of  a  whole  nation  of  his  subjects, 
'  to  destroy,  kill,  and  cause  to  perish  all  Jews,  both  young 
and  old,  little  ones  and  women,'  because  their  laws  were 
diverse  from  all  people,  .  .  .  though  they  are  not  charged 
with  any  acts  of  rebellion,  and  that  this  decree  should  have 
been  published  nearl)-  a  }-car  beforehand  to  all  the  people. 


1 879-  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  689 

including  the  Jews  themselves  (as  we  may  gather  from 
iv^  1-3).  And  it  is  still  more  incredible  that  when  the 
second  decree  was  issued,  75,000  of  his  other  subjects,  men, 
women,  and  children,  should  have  been  killed  by  the  Jews, 
without,  it  would  seem,  the  loss  of  a  single  Jew — no  such 
loss,  at  least,  is  indicated  or  implied  in  ix.  17-19  ;  and 
without  the  whole  population  rising  en  masse  to  overwhelm 
these  blood-thirsty  murderers  who  were  butchering  their 
families,  though  they  did  not  pillage  their  homes — espe- 
cially as  they  would  have  been  supported  by  the  King's 
first  decree."  ^ 

This  is  by  no  means  all  ;  but  it  becomes  wearisome  to  wade 
through  the  absurdities  contained  in  a  book  which,  according 
to  Bishop  Lord  A.  Harvey,  "  does  not  in  the  least  savour  of 
romance."  His  remark  applies  with  equal  force  to  the  story 
of  Robinson  Crusoe  and  to  De  Foe's  "  Relation  of  the  appari- 
tion of  one  Mrs.  Veal  the  next  day  after  her  death  to  one 
Mrs.  Bargreave  at  Canterbury."  ^  Both  are  almost  inimitable 
specimens  of  plausible  fiction  ;  and  the  practice  of  the  art  of 
plausible  fiction  stretches  back  to  many  a  century  before  the 
Christian  era.  Traditionalists  of  every  school  seem  to  be 
always  falling  into  this  miserable  trap,  even  though  the  bait 
may  be  of  a  sort  to  undeceive  any  but  the  most  credulous  of 
.  mankind.  But,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Passover,  the  origin 
assigned  for  the  celebration  of  the  Purim  festival  is  not  the 
real  origin. 

"  It  is  here  stated  that  the  name  arose  from  Haman's  '  casting 
lots,' — for  what  precise  object  is  not  mentioned,  but  appar- 
ently with  that  of  fixing  by  lot  a  day  and  month  for  the 
massacre.  But  this  explanation  of  its  origin  is  incredible, 
not  only  because  this  incident  of  Haman's  casting  lots 
would  hardly  have  been  chosen  to  give  a  name  to  a  feast 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  445. 

^  See    Sir  Walter   Scott,   Miscellaneous    Prose    Works :  Biographies. 
"  De  Foe,"  Appendix  2. 

VOL.   I.  Y  Y 


690  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

commemorating  an  escape  of  the  Jews  from  a  general 
massacre,  but  because  the  whole  story  of  that  threatened 
massacre  is  manifestly  fictitious." 

The  real  origin  of  the  feast  may  be  found  perhaps  in  the 
missing  portion  of  the  memoir  of  Nehemiah,  which  the 
chronicler,  in  the  Bishop's  judgement,  has  suppressed  after 
Nehemiah  vii.  5,  and 

"  which  seems  to  have  unfolded  Nehemiah's  plan  for  re- 
peopling  Jerusalem,  B.C.  445,  about  a  century  after  the 
return  from  exile,  or  two  centuries  before  the  Book  of  Esther 
was  written,  viz.  by  casting  lots,  as  we  may  gather  from  the 
summary  of  the  proceeding  in  question  in  Nehemiah  xi.  i, 
'and  the  rest  of  the  people  cast  lots,  to -bring  one  of  ten  to 
dwell  in  Jerusalem  the  holy  city,  and  nine  parts  in  other 
cities,'  and  then  it  is  added,  '  and  the  people  blessed  all  the 
men  that  volunteered  to  dwell  at  Jerusalem.'  This  must 
obviously  have  been  a  time  of  great  excitement  and  com- 
motion ;  and  it  would  be  very  natural  that  a  festival  should 
be  established,  partly  to  commemorate  the  self-devotion  of 
those  who  were  willing  to  leave  their  country  homes  and 
lands  for  the  public  good,  and  partly  to  afford  an  oppor- 
tunity for  annual  reunion  with  their  brethren.  This  would 
carry  the  institution  of  the  feast  as  far  back  as  the  reign  of 
Artaxerxes,  a  few  years  only  after  the  time  assigned  to  it 
by  this  writer  in  the  reign  of  his  predecessor.  If  it  be 
thought  strange  that  a  Persian  name,  'the  feast  of  Purim,' 
should  have  been  given  to  a  feast  which  originated  at 
Jerusalem,  we  may  observe  that  the  Persian  word  Pekha  = 
pacha  or  satrap,  is  used  familiarly  for  a  Jewish  governor 
in  the  Books  of  Nehemiah,  Haggai,  and  Malachi." 

Fev/  portions  of  the   Old    Testament  writings   have   thus 

escaped  the  scrutiny  into  which  the  problem  of  the  Mosaic 

authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  forced  the  Bishop  to  enter.     To 

\vhat    age   or   ages   are   these    few   remaining    books    to    be 

1  Pe?ifatcuch,  Part  VII.  p.  452. 


1879.  THE  PENTATEUCH:     ITS  GROWTH.  691 

assigned  ?  By  general  admission  the  Book  of  Job  betrays 
no  acquaintance  with  the  Pentateuch.  From  this  fact  Canon 
Cook  inferred  that  the  book  was  pre-Mosaic  ;  and  in  strict- 
ness this  would  mean  that  it  was  written  before  the  Israelites 
came  up  out  of  Egypt.  Is  this  a  sufficient  reason  for  refusing 
to  consider  the  post-exilic  origin  of  the  work  }  The  Book  of 
Esther  was  undoubtedly  written  after  the  Captivity,  and  it 
contains  no  reference  whatever  to  the  Mosaic  institutions  ; 
and  the  same  remark  applies  to  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,^ 
which  Dean  Westcott  regards  as  post-exilic.  Canon  Cook's 
conclusion  was  dismissed  by  Professor  Kuenen  as  deserving 
no  consideration.  The  notion  that  the  Book  of  Job  was 
written  in  pre-Mosaic  times,  or  by  Moses  himself,  is,  he  says, 
so  utterly  at  variance  with  all  the  results  of  critical  inquiry,, 
that  it  cannot  be  worth  while  to  judge  and  contradict  it."-  It 
matters  not  to  what  later  date  it  may  be  assigned,  since  it 
proves  that  at  the  time  of  its  composition,  whenever  this  may 
have  been,  the  Levitical  legislation  was  either  unknown  or 
regarded  as  unauthoritative,  and  Mr.  Cook  himself  admitted 
that,  whenever  the  writer  may  have  lived,  he  lived  under 
circumstances  which  either  kept  him  in  ignorance  of  the 
institutions  peculiar  to  Mosaism,  or  made  him  to  a  most 
remarkable  extent  independent  of  their  influence.^  But  in 
this  book  we  have  many  words  which  are  characteristic  of  the 
Levitical  legislation  ;  and  also,  by  Mr.  Cook's  admission, 

"  many  words  and   idiomatic  expressions  which  occur  in  the 
latest  Hebrew  writings." 

In  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  in  which  certainly  we  should  have 
expected  to  find  them,  there  are  no  signs  of  any  acquaintance 
with  the  Levitical  legislation,  nor  is  there  any  reference  to 
the  Decalogue.  The  style  of  Ecclesiastes  points  to  a  time 
long  after  the  Captivity,  when  the  Hebrew  tongue  was  greatly 

^  Pentateuch,  Part  MI.  p.  454.  -  lb.  ^  lb.  p.  456. 

Y  Y  2 


692  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

corrupted  by  Aramaisms.  It  may,  therefore,  have  been  put 
together  about  200  B.C.,  not  very  long  before  the  time  when 
Antiochos  Epiphanes  mounted  the  throne  of  Syria  and  began 
his  attempt  to  Hellenize  the  Jews. 

"The  writer  shows  no  sign  of  Jewish  exclusiveness,  no  special 
attachment  to  the  Jewish  worship  and  religion.  .  .  .  This 
agrees  with  the  fact  that  many  Jews  in  the  time  of  Antiochos 
were  indifferent  to  their  own  religion,  and  readily  adopted 
Greek  customs  ;  in  fact,  the  revolt  of  the  Maccabees  was  a 
protest  against  such  injunctions  as  those  in  viii.  2-5,  x. 
4,  20."  1 

For  the  Book  of  Canticles  it  is  certain  that  Solomon  at 
least  was  not  the  author.  An  Eastern  despot  cannot  have 
written  a  poem  which  exhibited  himself  as  an  unsuccessful 
lover.  Here  also,  as  in  so  many  other  books,  there  is  no 
reference  to  the  Deuteronomistic  or  Levitical  legislation  or  to 
the  Decalogue. 

The  Bishop's  Seventh  Part  concludes  with  a  more  extended 
examination  of  the  Book  of  Psalms.  It  is  full  of  interest  and 
most  valuable  ;  but  for  the  Bishop's  main  purpose  it  was  in 
no  way  necessary  for  him  to  enter  into  the  inquiry.  Bishop 
Harold  Browne  wholly  mistook  the  nature  and  aim  of  his 
work  when  he  thanked  him  for  resting  his  case  so  largely  on 
the  testimony  of  the  Psalmists.  The  Bishop  replied  with 
an  emphatic  protest  against  this  "  unfair  and  unwarranted 
statement." 

"  I  have  not  rested  my  case  at  all  upon  the  Psalmists.  I 
have  only  adduced  the  very  remarkable  phenomena  in  the 
Psalms,  with  reference  to  the  use  of  the  Divine  Name,  as  a 
collateral  evidence,  confirming,  as  far  as  it  goes,  the  view 
as  to  the  later  adoption  of  Jahveh  as  the  name  of  the  God 
of  Israel,  to  which  I  had  been  led  by  entirely  different 
processes  of  reasoning." " 

1  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  469.  -  lb.  p.  483. 


1 879.  THE  PENTATEUCH :    ITS  GROWTH.  693 

The  general  conclusions  reached  by  the  Bishop  have  been 
already  given, ^  and  in  the  concluding  volume  they  are  not 
materially  modified.  The  whole  inquiry  is  brought  to  a  close 
in  a  chapter  on  the  formation  of  the  Hebrew  canon  of  Scrip- 
ture. The  forming  of  this  canon  brings  us  down  to  times 
later  than  the  Christian  era.  The  notion  that  it  was  com- 
pleted and  closed  by  Ezra 

"  is  at  once  set  aside  by  the  fact  that  the  Talmud  ...  is  not 
only  silent  about  this  remarkable  fact,  although  laying  so 
great  stress  on  the  services  of  Ezra,  but  especially  mentions 
the  uncertainty  which  still  existed  respecting  some  of  the 
canonical  books," 

and  this  cannot  be  reconciled  with  the  idea  of  these  having 
been  placed  in  the  canon  by  the  authority  of  P2zra.-  The 
wild  notion  that  the  canon  must  have  been  closed  by  Malachi 
because  he  was  the  last  of  the  prophets,  is  set  aside  not  only 
by  the  recognition  of  John  the  Baptist  as  a  prophet,  but  by 
the  fact  that  in  the  Gospel  of  St.  Luke,  Zacharias,  Simeon, 
Anna,  are 

"  introduced  as  prophesying  exactly  after  the  manner  of  the 
ancient  prophets  of  Israel."  ^  "  To  all  appearance  no  clear 
view  was  entertained  as  to  what  this  collection  should  in- 
clude, and  no  definite  plan  was  followed  in  enlarging  it. 
So  far  as  the  authority  of  the  writers  of  the  Epistles  bearing 
the  names  of  Jude  and  Peter  may  carry  us,  the  book  of 
Enoch  was  virtually  a  canonical  book  which  had  a  legiti- 
mate claim  for  admission  into  the  circle  of  the  Hebrew  and 
also  of  the  Christian  Scriptures." 

The  historical  and  prophetical  literature  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment has  thus  been   shown   to   be  of  immense  importance  in 

^  See  above,  pp.  534,  et  seq.  ^  Pentateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  507. 

^  lb.  p.  508. 


694  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

proving  the  very  late  date  of  the  Levitical  legislation  and  the 
so-called  histories  of  the  chronicler. 

"If  these  thoroughly  dishonest  products  of  the  priestly  or 
Levitical  mind  in  a  very  late  age  were  removed  from  the 
Bible,  the  amazing  contrast  between  the  provisions  of  that 
legislation  in  the  Pentateuch  and  Book  of  Joshua  and  the 
actual  facts  of  the  history  under  the  best  kings,  in  the 
earliest  or  latest  times,  would  arrest  the  attention  of  most 
intelligent  readers,  and  they  would  be  soon  led  of  themselves 
to  the  conclusion  (without  the  evidence  adduced  for  it  in 
Part  VI.),  that  no  such  laws  could  ever  have  been  laid 
down  in  the  wilderness,  since  no  trace  of  them  appears  in 
the  practice  of  the  age  of  David  and  Solomon."  ^ 

The  Bishop's  work  was  thus  completed  ;  and  succeeding 
generations  will  see  more  and  more  clearly  how  wonderful 
that  work  was.  From  beginning  to  end  it  has  strengthened 
the  belief  of  those  who  will  not  suffer  the  letter  to  crush  the 
spirit  ;  but  while  strengthening  their  faith,  it  has  dealt  the 
death-blow  to  all  traditional  theories  and  superstitions  which 
first  cramp  and  finally  destroy  the  proper  action  of  the 
human  mind.  Of  few  in  the  history  of  the  world  can  it  be 
so  emphatically  said  as  of  him,  that  he  sought  for  the  truth 
with  single-hearted  resolution,  and  that  the  truth  made  him 
free.  He  had,  what,  after  all,  few  have,  the  courage  of  his 
opinions ;  and  he  was  ready,  therefore,  to  put  before  what  are 
called  the  masses  the  main  substance  of  his  examination  of 
the  Pentateuch.  But  he  would  not  do  this  until  he  had 
challenged  first  the  attention  of  the  learned  to  the  questions 
for  which  he  insisted  on  having  a  valid  answer,  if  such  answer 
could  be  given. 

"  I  should  feel,  indeed,"  he  said,  "  that,  unless  I  had  first 
stated  at  length,  for  the  consideration  and  examination  of 

^  PcJiiateuch,  Part  VII.  p.  513. 


1879-  THE  PENTATEUCH :     ITS  GROWTH.  695 

the  learned,  the  grounds  on  which  my  conclusions  are  based 
I  should  not  be  justified  in  bringing  the  discussion  of  these 
questions  in  this  form  within  the  reach  of  the  people  at 
large.  But  a  long  interval  has  now  elapsed  since  my  First 
Part  was  published  ;  and  I  have  sufficiently  tested  the 
validity  of  my  arguments  by  the  character  of  the  answers 
which  are  given  to  some  of  them." 

He  felt,  therefore,  not  the  smallest  scruple  in  preparing  a 
People's  Edition  which  should,  within  the  limits  of  a  single 
volume,  show  them  the  real  state  of  the  case.  The  prepara- 
tion of  such  a  volume  was  a  duty  which  he  owed  to  the  people 
of  England,  and  in  a  yet  higher  degree  to  the  people  of  Natal. 
The  latter  had  heard  him  violently  condemned  by  the  Metro- 
politan Bishop  of  Capetown,  and  it  was  right  that  they  who 
could  not  be  expected  to  make  acquaintance  with  his  books 
in  the  larger  form,  should  be  enabled  to  judge  for  themselves 
as  to  the  contents  and  as  to  the  whole  tone  and  spirit  of  his 
Avork.  In  his  advertisement  to  this  popular  edition  he  had 
to  refer  again  to  the  absurd  Bibliolatry  of  men  who,  like 
Bishop  Bickersteth  of  Ripon,  may  have  believed  what  they 
said,  and  of  others  whose  good  faith  in  the  matter  was,  to  say 
the  least,  uncertain.  For  the  former  there  might  be  some 
excuse  when  he  asserted  that  the  whole  Bible,  like  its  Author, 
must  be  pure  unchangeable  truth,  truth  without  admixture 
of  error ;  for  the  latter  there  could  be  absolutely  none  when 
they  contended  that  to  deny  the  infallible  authority  of  the 
Bible  was  to  depart  from  the  faith.  But  so  long  as  Bishop 
Bickersteth  and  others  who  agreed  with  him  could  put  forth 
their  ludicrous  propositions,  and  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
could  enunciate  the  nonsense  that 

"  the  whole  Bible  is  the  unerring  word  of  the  living  God," 

— a  formula  applied  with  equal  earnestness  to  the  Rig  Veda 
and  the  Koran, — the  Bishop  of  Natal  was  bound  to  say  : 


696  LIFE  OF  BISHOP  COLENSO.  chap.  xii. 

"  I  hold  it  to  be  my  duty,  as  a  servant  of  God  and  a  lover  of 
the  souls  of  men,  to  do  my  utmost  to  counteract  a  system 
of  teaching  which  I  believe  to  be  erroneous  and  mischievous, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  hindrances  to  the  progress  of  true 
religion  in  the  land."  ^ 

1  Advertisement  to  People's  Edition  of  the  Pentateuch,  1864. 


APPENDIX   A. 

See  pages  279,  312. 

"  BiSHOPSTOWE,  August  7,  1861. 
"  My  dear  Brother, 

"  I  thank  you  sincerely  for  your  letter  on  the  subject  of  my 
Com?/ieniary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Ro}ua7is.  I  cannot  be  surprised  at 
your  writing  so  earnestly  and  seriously,  holding  the  views  which  you 
do  on  some  of  the  points  which  I  have  discussed.  But  as  you  will 
have  learnt  from  my  last  letter,  it  is  too  late  now  to  stop  the  publica- 
tion of  the  book,  even  if  I  desired  to  do  so.  Whatever  you  may  think 
it  right  to  say  or  do  in  the  matter,  I  am  quite  sure  that  you  will  only 
act  from  a  sense  of  duty  to  what  you  believe  to  be  the  truth,  which 
compels  you  to  set  aside  all  personal  feelings,  in  obedience  to  a 
higher  law.  In  writing  what  I  have  written,  and  publishing  it,  I,  too, 
have  done  the  same,  though  conscious  that  I  should  thereby  cause 
pain  to  yourself  and  others  whom  I  entirely  esteem  and  love.  It  is 
true  that  you  have  mistaken  some  of  my  expressions  :  others  (forgive 
me  for  saying  it)  you  seem  to  have  misjudged.  But  in  respect  of 
others  I  am  well  aware  that  my  views  differ  strongly  from  yours, 
though  I  believe  that  I  have  said  nothing  in  my  book  which  is 
not  in  accordance  with  the  teaching  of  the  Bible,  or  which  tran- 
scends the  limits  so  liberally  allowed  by  the  Church  of  England 
for  freedom  of  thought  on  these  subjects.  I  will  now  touch,  one 
by  one,  on  the  several  points  to  which  you  have  drawn  my 
attention. 

"(i)  I  have  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  canonical  books  of 
Scripture  do  contain  errors,  and  some  very  grave  ones,  in  matters  of 
fact,  and  that  the  historical  narratives  are  7iot  to  be  depended  on  as 
true  in  all  their  details.    I  have  never  stated  this  publicly ;  but  surely 


698  APPENDIX. 


in  this  age  of  critical  inquiry,  every  intelligent  student  of  the  Scriptures 
must  be  aware  of  the  truth  of  what  I  say.  It  is  vain  to  deny  what  is 
patent  to  any  careful  and  conscientious  reader,  who  will  set  himself 
to  compare  one  passage  of  Scripture  history  with  another.  And,  I 
must  say,  I  had  supposed  that  there  were  very  few  in  the  present 
day,  except  in  a  very  narrow  school  of  theology,  who  would  contest 
this  point." 

[Here  follows  a  summary  of  difficulties  involved  in  the  history  of 
Hebron  and  Hamul.     See  above,  p.  497.] 

"  Of  course,  the  above  are  only  a  few  instances,  such  as  occur  to 
me  on  the  moment,  of  a  multitude  of  others,  which  may  be  found  in 
the  Scriptures.  And  they  are  not  mere  discrepancies  (such  as  that 
one  blind  man  is  named  in  one  place,  and  two  in  another)  which  may 
admit  of  explanation,  but  absolute  contradictions  in  matters  of  fact, 
to  deny  the  existence  of  which  would,  for  me  at  all  events,  be  dis- 
honest and  immoral,  and  most  unworthy,  as  it  seems  to  me,  of  any 
one  who  really  values  the  general  historical  truth  of  the  Scriptures. 

"  But  I  have  nowhere  said  what  you  have  assumed  for  me  in 
addition  to  the  above,  namely  that  '  inspiration  apparently  is  ex- 
hibited not  in  the  declaration  of  the  very  truth,  which  God  has 
revealed  to  our  faith  respecting  Himself  and  the  way  of  salvation 
by  Christ,  but  in  the  spirit  and  the  life  which  breathes  throughout 
the  Holy  Book,'  &c.  I  say  that  'the  very  truth'  is  'the  spirit  and 
the  life,'  and  not  the  mere  words  in  which  that  truth  may  be  conveyed 
to  us. 

"  With  respect  to  the  latter  portion  of  your  remarks  on  this  subject, 
I  prefer  using  the  language  of  the  Consecration  Service — namely, 
that  I  am  persuaded  that  the  Holy  Scriptures  contain  sufficiently  all 
doctrine  required  of  necessity  for  eternal  salvation,  which  is  identical 
with  that  of  the  Sixth  Article  ;  so  that  both  together  express  sufficiently 
the  mind  of  our  Church.  In  this  sense,  of  course,  I  do  receive  the 
Holy  Scriptures  as  the  '  rule  of  faith.'  But  I  object  to  bind  myself 
to  such  expressions  as  yours,  which  are  neither  in  the  Bible  nor  the 
Prayer  Book,  and  may  easily  have  a  meaning  given  to  them  very 
different  from  what  either  you  or  I  intend  by  them.  It  would  be 
easy,  for  instance,  for  me  to  say  that  I  believe  the  Bible  to  'contain 
the  unerring  word  of  God's  revealed  truth.'  The  question  then  would 
be,  What  is  meant  by  God's  revealed  truth?  Is  it  the  'spirit  and 
the  life,'  or  the  mere  words  of  the  Bible?  And  if  the  latter,  as  I 
■understand  you  to  say,  then  are  all  the  words  of  the  Bible  part  of 


APPENDIX.  699 


God's  revealed  truth  ;  for  instance,  the  story  of  the  birth  of  Pharez 
and  Hezron,  above  referred  to?  You  once  told  me,  I  think,  that 
you  held  the  genealogies  in  Chronicles  to  be  the  Word  of  God,  and 
therefore,  I  suppose,  as  inspired,  '  unerring  words  of  God's  revealed 
truth.'  Now  I  cannot  believe  this.  I  imagine  those  tables  to  be 
mere  transcripts  of  family  registers — perhaps  not  even  that ;  and 
I  know  them  to  be  full  of  errors  and  contradictions,  which  are  not 
in  any  way  to  be  accounted  for  by  mistakes  in  the  transcription  of 
manuscripts. 

"So,  too,  when  you  say  that  the  dogmatic  teaching  of  the  Bible 
must  be  received  by  all  Christians,  of  course  I  can  assent  to  this. 
But  then  I  believe  that  the  dogmatic  teaching  of  St.  Paul  in  the 
Romans  is  just  what  I  have  set  forth  in  my  book;  and  you  judge 
differently. 

"  I  certainly  do  say,  and  will  maintain,  that  to  the  man  himself 
there  is  but  one  lawgiver — the  law  within  the  heart — to  which,  in 
some  form  or  other,  he  must  bring  every  question  of  morals  or  of 
faith  for  judgement.  One  man  has  fully  persuaded  himself  that  the 
letter  of  the  Bible  is  the  revealed  Word  of  God.  When  his  reason  is 
satisfied  of  this,  his  conscience  tells  him  that  at  all  cost  of  bodily  or 
mental  pain  he  must  hold  to  the  letter  of  the  Bible.  Another's  con- 
science keeps  him,  in  like  manner,  subject  implicitly  to  the  dicta  of 
his  Church,  when  his  reason  is  once  satisfied  that  the  Church  has  a 
right  to  command  him.  And  each  of  these  will  test  his  conduct 
continually,  by  bringing  it  into  comparison  with  the  words  of  the 
Bible  or  the  Church,  before  the  tribunal  of  his  conscience.  If  his 
heart  does  not  condemn  him  in  this  review,  he  will  be  satisfied  and 

*  have  confidence  before  God,'  though  all  the  while  his  conscience 
may  really  be  injured  by  slavery  to  a  defective  judgement  of  his 
reasoning  powers.  Another  takes  a  different  view  of  inspiration,  as 
I  do  myself,  and  believes  that  God's  Spirit  is  indeed  speaking  in  the 
Bible  to  all  who  will  humbly  seek  and  listen  to  His  teaching,  but  that 
even  when  we  read  the  different  portions  of  it,  we  are  to  '  try  the 
spirits  whether  they  are  of  God,  to  prove  all  things,  and  hold  fast 
that  which  is  good,'  to  '  compare  things  spiritual  with  spiritual,' — 
that  it  is  a  part  of  our  glorious,  yet  solemn,  responsibility  to  do  this, 
— that,  having  the  Spirit  ourselves,  '  an  unction  from  the  Holy  One, 
that  we  may  have  all  things,' — having  the  promise  that  we  shall  be 

*  guided  into  all  truth,'  if  we  seek  daily  to  have  our  minds  enlightened 
and   our   consciences    quickened,  by   walking  in  the   light  already 


700  APPENDIX. 


vouchsafed  to  us, — we  are  not  at  liberty  to  shake  off  this  responsibility 
of  judging  for  ourselves  whether  this  or  that  portion  of  the  Bible 
has  a  message  from  God  to  our  souls  or  not.  God  will  not  relieve  us 
from  this  responsibility  ;  He  will  not  give  us  what,  in  one  form  or 
other,  men  are  so  prone  to  desire — an  infallible  external  guide — a 
voice  from  without,  such  as  men  often  wish  to  substitute  for  the 
voice  within. 

"  (2)  On  the  second  point  to  which  you  refer,  I  believe  that  my 
language  is  entirely  in  accordance  with  the  Second  and  Ninth  Articles 
of  our  Church  ;  and  I  must  say  that  I  am  surprised  that  you  should 
have  remarked  as  you  have  done  on  this  subject,  when  I  have 
written  in  my  book  as  follows." 

[Here  follow  citations  from  pp.  65,  67,  68,  97,  106,  112  of  the 
Commentary^ 

"  But  indeed  there  are  innumerable  passages  in  which  my  book 
distinctly  implies  and  expresses  the  belief  that  Christ  suffered  as  a 
sacrifice  for  original  guilt  as  well  as  for  actual  sin  of  men. 

"  (3)  With  regard  to  the  Atonement,  I  believe,  of  course,  that  I 
have  expressed  the  mind  of  St.  Paul  upon  this  point.  I  most 
assuredly  do  not  deny  that  our  Lord  was  a  true  propitiatory  sacri- 
fice for  our  sins,  as  you  say ;  for  I  have  distinctly  said  (p.  68)  that 
'  we  are  privileged  to  look  at  Christ  Jesus,  through  faith  in  His  blood, 
and  behold  in  Him  the  propitiation  for  our  sins,  the  object  which 
makes  us  acceptable  to  God.'  I  have  no  less  distinctly  expressed  my 
belief  that  *  we  have  redemption  through  His  blood,  even  the  for- 
giveness of  sins,'  for  I  have  said  (p.  69),  '  through  that  precious 
bloodshedding  the  whole  race  has  been  redeemed  from  the  curse.' 
And  I  am  sure  that  there  are  other  passages  where,  in  other  like 
words,  I  have  said  the  same. 

"  But  I  deny  that  His  was  a  vicarious  sacrifice,  in  the  sense  in  which 
I  understand  you  to  use  the  word ;  namely,  that  He  endured  in  our 
stead  the  weiglit  of  God's  wrath,  He  bore  the  penalty  due  to  our  sins. 
I  believe  that  neither  the  expression  nor  the  idea  is  Scriptural ;  nor 
is  either  to  be  found  in  the  Prayer  Book.  In  the  New  Testament  it 
is  invariably  said  that  our  Lord  suffered  or  died  hyper,  on  behalf  of, 
not  anti,  instead  of,  the  children  of  men — the  same  expression  being 
used  as  when  the  shepherd  is  said  to  lay  down  his  life  7^/',  not  instead 
of,  the  sheep,  or  where  St.  Peter  says,  '  he  will  lay  down  his  life  for 
his  Lord,'  or  where  St.  Paul  says,  '  he  is  ready  not  only  to  be  bound, 
but  also  to  ^\Q,for  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus.'  .  .  . 


APPENDIX.  70  r 


"When  you  say  that  my  language  is  not  always  consistent  with 
itself,  that  it  is  in  some  places  more  evangelical  than  others,  I  must 
respectfully  contest  this,  and  assert  that  my  language  is  the  same 
throughout,  as  evangelical  in  one  place  as  in  another  \  though  it  is 
not  possible  on  every  page  to  produce  all  that  one  would  say  upon 
the  great  subject  concerned,  especially  when  the  thoughts  of  the 
commentator  must  follow  those  of  the  original  writer.  How  it  can 
be  said  that  I  maintain  that  our  Lord  came  to  '  release  us  only  from 
the  power  or  dominion,  not  from  the  guilt,  of  our  sins,'  with  such 
passages  as  I  have  written,  not  only  on  the  pages  you  have  quoted 
(68,  94,  95,  161,  162),  but  in  many  others  where  the  subject  led  to 
it,  1  cannot  conceive 

"  As  to  the  former  portion  of  the  Second  Article,  I  am  sorry  that 
the  expression  is  there  used,  '  to  reconcile  the  Father  to  us,'  because 
it  is  not  Scriptural,  and  it  is  liable  to  be  misinterpreted.  But  these 
words  of  our  Church  cannot  be  meant  to  contradict  or  set  aside  the 
Apostle's  own  words,  when  he  says  that  '  all  things  are  of  God,  who 
hath  reconciled  us  to  Himself  by  Jesus  Christ,'  that '  God  was  in  Christ, 
reconciling  the  world  unto  himself,  not  imputing  their  trespasses 
unto  them.'  There  is,  of  course,  a  sense  in  which  a  father  displeased 
requires  to  be  reconciled  to  his  child,  though  tenderly  loving  all  the 
while  that  he  corrects  him  and  manifests  his  anger  towards  him.  I 
have  thought  that  our  Lord  came,  at  His  Father's  command,  to 
reconcile  His  Father  and  our  Father  in  this  sense  to  us  ;  and  I  have 
used  this  expression  on  p.  89,  'one  reconciled,  or,  rather,  reconciling 
Father  and  Friend.' 

"  (4)  The  Scripture  teaches  us  that  God  is  love.  Being  perfect 
love.  He  must  be  perfectly  holy,  just,  and  righteous.  And  surely 
my  book  in  a  hundred  places  speaks  as  strongly  of  God's  loving 
correction  of  the  wilful  and  disobedient  as  of  the  loving  delight  in 
the  faithful  and  true.  It  cannot,  I  say  confidently,  be  justly  laid  to 
my  charge  that  I  overlook  the  holiness,  and  justice,  and  righteous- 
ness of  God,  though  certainly  I  do  not  hold  the  dogma  that  God 
•cannot  forgive  sin,  even  in  an  infant,  without  taking  vengeance  for  it, 
without  inflicting  on  some  one  pain  and  bitter  anguish  as  a  penalty. 

"  I  do  hold  that  all  men  are  justified  before  God,  using  the  word 
in  the  sense  in  which  St.  Paul  uses  it  throughout  this  Epistle,  not  in  that 
which  modern  theologians  may  perhaps  assign  to  it.  I  do  not  hold 
that  our  justification  depends  on  our  faith,  because  that  would  make 
it  a  matter  of  works,  in  direct  opposition  to  St.  Paul's  teaching.     Our 


702  APPENDIX. 


salvation  is  a  totally  different  thing  from  our  justification.  Being 
justified,  we  are  to  'work  out  our  own  salvation,'  and  therefore  for 
this  we  must  have  faith. 

"  But  with  St.  Paul  the  word  '  salvation '  means  something  very 
different  from  the  miserable  notion  commonly  attached  to  the  word, 
of  mere  dehverance  from  a  pit  of  woe.  He  means  by  it  the  being 
saved  from  that  Divine  displeasure  which  is  declared  against  all 
wilful  unfaithfulness,  and  which  will  be  manifested  upon  us  Christians 
above  all  others,  if  we  do  not  live  according  to  the  light  vouchsafed 
to  us,  and  answer  to  the  gracious  end  to  which  we  have  been  called. 
To  *  work  out  our  salvation  '  means,  with  St.  Paul,  to  live  faithfully  as 
becomes  the  children  of  God,  who  are  privileged  to  know  that  they 
are  justified  and  brought  near  to  their  Father's  footstool,  and  being 
prepared  here  on  earth  tor  His  glory. 

"  I  do  not  agree  with  your  statement  of  my  ideas  about  faith— viz., 
that  'what  faith  does  for  us  is  to  make  known  to  us,  to  give  us  a 
conscious  assurance  of  what  would  be  equally  true,  whether  we  have 
it  or  not,  that  God  looks  upon  us  as  righteous  in  His  Son.'  I  do 
not  think  that  faith  does  this  for  us  :  it  is  the  '  conscious  assurance  ' 
of  something  which  in  itself  is  true,  whether  we  believe  it  or  not, 
the  realising  of  things  hoped  for,  the  conviction  of  things  unseen. 
The  words,  however,  \\hich  you  have  quoted  from  p.  12  I  entirely 
abide  by  :  I  am  certain  tliat  this  is  what  St.  Paul  intends  to  teach  in 
this  Epistle. 

"  I  think  you  have  not  rightly  read  what  I  ha\e  said  on  p.  74. 
It  was  not  said,  as  you  appear  to  think,  that  'justification  consists 
in  being  justified  in  one's  own  conscience.'  Quite  the  contrary.  I 
hold  that  we  are  justified  in  God's  sight,  whether  we  know  or  believe 
it  or  not. 

"  But  when  you  go  on  to  say,  '  If  these  views  are  true,  I  cannot  teil 
why  we  need  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen  ;  it  seems  to  me 
that  you  take  away  the  great  motive  for  doing  so  :  they  are,  without 
our  teaching,  accepted,  righteous,  justified,  saved.'  I  really  hardly  know 
how  to  reply  to  this — not  because  I  cannot  reply  to  it,  but  (pardon 
me  for  saying  so)  because  I  am  amazed  that  it  should  be  necessary 
to  make  a  reply  to  it. 

"  In  the  first  place  I  have  taught  that  neither  they  nor  we  shall  be 
'saved'  if  we  die  in  impenitence,  each  according  to  the  light  he  has 
received.  But  it  is  plain  that  you  are  speaking  only  of  endless  horrors 
in  the  pit  of  woe,  whereas  I  am  thinking  of  the  Divine  displeasure, 


APPENDIX.  705. 


which  every  human  being  will  incur  who  lives  unfaithfully  in  pro- 
portion to  the  light  he  has  received,  and  dies  in  impenitence.  I 
have  said  accordingly  (p.  95),  "We  shall  be  saved  from  that 
wrath  by  having  our  faults  freely  pardoned  for  His  sake  ivhen 
confessed  and  repented  of.'  .  .  . 

"  But  have  we  no  motive  to  preach  such  a  Gospel  as  St.  Paul's, 
according  to  my  views  of  it,  to  the  heathen  ?  To  tell  them  that  God 
loves  them,  that  He,  after  whom  they  have  been  groping  in  the 
darkness,  has  been  caring  for  them  all  along,  and  now  calls  them  near 
to  Himself,  that  they  may  know  Him  more  fully  and  the  rich  treasury 
of  His  love  ?  Why,  this  is  the  very  life  and  soul  of  missionary  work. 
It  has  been  my  joy  for  some  years  past  thus  to  publish  the  Gospel  of 
the  grace  of  God  ;  and  if  you  could  witness  the  effect  upon  those 
who  heard  the  message,  you  would  not  doubt  that  it  was  at  least  as 
effective  as  that  Gospel  'which  is  not  a  Gospel,'  which  is  so  often 
preached  to  them.  Is  the  Gospel,  then,  only  a  means  for  '  saving  ' 
men's  souls  from  endless  misery  ?  And  because  they  who  are  faithful 
with  their  fraction  of  a  talent  without  it,  may  be  as  safe  as,  that  is, 
not  more  or  less  safe  than.  Christians  with  their  ten  thousand  talents, 
is  there  no  work  to  be  done  among  the  heathen  that  the  hearts  of 
our  fellow-men  may  be  gladdened  and  their  eyes  enlightened,  and 
their  spirits  filled  with  life,  and,  above  all,  that  God's  gracious 
command  may  be  obeyed  and  His  name  be  glorified  ? 

"  I  do  believe  that  my  teaching  on  this  subject  in  this  book  is  '  in 
full  accordance  with  the  plain  teaching  of  the  Church  which  I  am 
pledged  to  guard  and  maintain  as  laid  down  in  her  Articles,'  and, 
above  all,  with  my  consecration  vow. 

"  (5)  You  have  been  long  aware  that  I  do  not  agree  with  those 
who  hold  what  is  called  the  sacramental  system,  and  that  I  regard 
their  views  as  unsound  and  unscriptural.  But  I  have  not  spoken  of 
sacraments  as  OJily  signs,  and  not  also  '  means  of  grace  '  when  duly 
received. 

"  With  respect  also  to  the  Lord's  Supper,  I  have  taught  in  this 
book,  and  more  fully  in  my  Sermons  on  the  Eucharist  that  we  are 
all  partakers  in  like  manner  from  our  birth-hour  of  the  benefits  flow- 
ing from  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ,  which  is  the  '  free '  gift  of 
God,  set  forth  to  us  in  that  sacrament.  But  this  sacrament,  as  the 
Church  Catechism  teaches,  is  ordained  for  the  continual  remembrance 
of  the  sacrifice  of  the  death  of  Christ,  and  of  the  benefits  which  we 
receive  thereby  ;  and  coming  to  it  faithfully,  we  shall  be  privileged  to 


704  APPENDIX. 

draw  continually  by  it,  as  a  means  of  grace,  more  and  more  from  the 
Fountain  of  Life. 

"  Having  my  book  on  the  Romans  before  you,  and  having  so 
recently  had  occasion  to  read  with  some  attention  my  Sermons  on  the 
Eucharist,  I  cannot  conceive  how  you  can  find  any  just  reason  for 
quoting  against  me  the  words  of  Articles  25,  28,  and  29,  the  Com- 
munion Service,  Homilies,  and  Catechism,  with  which,  as  I  believe, 
the  views  which  I  have  expressed  in  these  publications  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  two  sacraments  are  in  entire  accordance.  I  cannot  say 
the  same  of  the  '  sacramental  system,'  which  I  believe  to  be  opposed 
to  the  Prayer  Book.  You  say  that  these  Articles,  &c.,  exclude  my 
saying  that  all  men  are  partaking  everywhere,  at  all  times,  of 
Christ's  body  and  blood,  whether  in  the  sacraments  or  out  of  them, 
whether  they  feed  upon  them  by  living  faith  or  not.  I  have  shown 
more  fully  in  my  Sermons  on  the  Eucharist  my  grounds  for  making 
this  assertion — viz.  that  all  men  have  life,  spiritual  as  well  as  bodily  ; 
that  they  could  have  no  life  (as  our  Lord  tells  us)  without  '  eating 
His  flesh  and  drinking  His  blood  ' ;  that  consequently  they  do  par- 
take of  His  body  and  blood,  and  so  (as  Waterland  says)  '  our  Lord's 
general  doctrine  in  John  vi.  seems  to  abstract  from  all  particulars,  and 
to  resolve  into  this,  that  whether  with  faith  or  without,  whether  in 
the  sacraments  or  out  of  the  sacraments,  whether  before  Christ  or  since, 
whether  in  covenant  or  out  of  the  covenant,  whether  here  or  hereafter, 
no  man  ever  was,  is,  or  will  be  accepted,  but  in  and  through  the 
grand  propitiation  made  by  the  blood  of  Christ,'  I  know  that  you 
do  not  agree  in  this  view;  but  I  am  at  least  not  singular  in 
holding  it. 

"  (6)  I  must  confess  that  it  does  appear  to  me  that  you  are  finding 
grounds  of  objection  in  my  book  which  do  not  really  exist,  when  you 
say  that  my  language  on  the  Judgement  'leaves  you  in  doubt  whether 
I  believe  that  God  has  appointed  a  day  in  which  he  will  judge  the 
world  in  righteousness,'  and  this,  notwithstanding  that  I  had  written 
thus,  p.  48,  '  Whenever  Christ  shall  appear,  to  visit  and  judge  in 
His  Father'.s  name,  now  amidst  the  affairs  of  daily  life  as  well  as  on 
the  great  day  of  future  account.  .   .   . 

"  There  are  other  passages  of  a  like  nature.  But  I  must  say,  with 
all  deference,  that  this  is  not  the  only  suggestion  made  without  the 
shadow  of  a  ground  for  it  (except  it  would  seem  a  presentiment  or 
prejudgement  that  so  it  must  be)  which  has  surprised  me  in  your 
letter. 


APPENDIX.  705 


"  (7)  With  regard  to  the  eternal  world,  I  have  expressly  refused  to 
carry  out  any  scheme  to  its  full  and  logical  conclusions.  /  have 
maintained  no  points  at  all  upon  the  subject,  but  that  He  whose  name 
is  Love  will  deal  according  to  His  name  with  His  creatures.  I  have 
said  that  I  entertain  '  hidden  hope  ' — and  I  say  not  even  that — for 
all ;  and  I  am  very  far  indeed  from  saying  that  the  great  majority  of 
mankind  will  be  '  saved  '  from  God's  wrath,  because  they  are  all 
'justified,'  though  I  dare  not  assert  that  such  wrath  will  certainly 
take  effect  in  inflicting  endless,  unutterable  woe  ;  and  I  have  shown 
abundant  reason,  as  I  think,  for  checking  the  utterance  of  that 
fearful  dogma,  which  so  many  profess  to  hold  (though  they  never 
boldly  teach  it,  and  follow  it  to  its  consequences),  without  any 
authority  from  the  Bible  or  the  Church  for  holding  it — I  mean  that 
the  wicked  shall  not  only  go  into  everlasting  fire  (as  I  have  taught) 
but  shall  remain  there  in  helpless  torment  for  ever  and  ever.  You 
would  have  stated  my  views  upon  this  subject  more  correctly  if  you 
had  written  thus,  '  You  maintain  these  points — that  the  doctrine  of 
endless  (not  eternal)  punishment  of  the  wicked  is  not  found  in  the 
Bible  or  the  Prayer  Book — that  all  punishment  is  an  act  of  love  and 
may  be  remedial — that  our  training  and  discipline  may  not  end  here, 
but  may  extend  to  the  next  world,  and,  for  aught  we  know,  to  infinite 
other  worlds  beyond  it — that  our  chastisement  may  be  purifying — that 
sin  may  be  purged  out  from  God's  universe  in  some  way  of  God's 
wisdom — that,  however,  there  is  no  purgatory,  where  penalties  are 
measured  by  time  and  intensity,  and  can  be  remitted  by  favour  or 
importunity.  .  .  . 

"  I  do  not  believe  that  my  doctrine  contradicts  at  all  the  language 
of  Holy  Scripture,  or  the  formularies  of  the  Church,  including  the 
Athanasian  Creed,  when  perfectly  interpreted.^  .  .  . 

"As  to  the  Athanasian  Creed,  it  is  notoriously  a  stumbUng-block 
to  thousands  of  pious  souls,  not  in  the  least  degree  because  of  the 
doctrines  set  forth  in  the  statement  of  the  '  Catholic  Faith,'  but 
because  of  the  harsh  language  of  the  damnatory  clauses.  It  is  very 
noticeable  that  in  the  oldest  manuscript  of  the  oldest  commentary 
(by  Fortunatus)  on  this  Creed  (preserved  at  Oxford),  the  particular 
clause  which  you  have  quoted,  the  second  verse,  is  left  out 
altogether.  Do  you  yourself  really  believe  in  the  sentence  of 
sweeping  condemnation  contained  in  this  verse,  as  ordinarily  in- 
terpreted, in  the  most  obvious  and  natural  sense  of  the  words  ?  Have 

^  See  pp.  17-319. 
VOL.  I.  Z  Z 


7o6  APPENDIX. 

you  not  also  reservations  of  your  own,  though  not,  perhaps,  as 
extensive  as  mine,  by  which  you  would  except  innumerable  cases 
from  the  judgement  here  pronounced,  which  at  first  sight  would  seem 
to  be  included  in  one  general  doom  of  endless,  irremediable  woe  ? 
I  am  sure  that  nine  clergymen  out  of  ten  have ;  and,  at  all  events 
that  they  will  not  dare  to  take  this  sentence  of  the  Creed  into  the 
pulpit  and  preach  the  doctrine  which  its  words,  taken  in  their  most 
simple  and  natural  sense,  obviously  contain.  .  .  . 

"That. God  may  guide  us  both  in  the  path  of  duty,  and  teach  us 
to  buy  the  truth  at  all  cost,  is  the  fervent  prayer  of,  my  dear 
Brother, 

"  Yours  ever  affectionately, 

"J.  W.  Natal." 

The  postscript  of  this  letter  consists  of  citations  from  Dr.  Hey's 
Leduixs  in  Divinity,  a  book  to  which  the  special  attention  of  candi- 
dates for  holy  orders  was  directed  by  the  Bishop  of  Ely,  by  whom 
Dr.  Colenso  was  ordained  deacon  and  priest.  These  citations  are 
prefaced  by  the  remark,  "  I  find  strange  resemblances  between  his 
language  and  some  parts  of  my  teaching  to  which  you  have  so 
strongly  objected."  ^ 


APPENDIX    B. 

LIST    OF   THE    ARCHBISHOPS    AND    BISHOPS    FROM    1848    TO    1S70. 


Archbishops  of— 
Canterbury  .     . 

York    .... 

Bishops  of — 
London    .     .     . 

Durham  .     .     . 

Winchester  .  . 
Bangor  .  .  . 
Bath  and  Wells 

Carlisle    . 

Chester    . 

Chichester 

Ely      .     . 

Exeter 

Gloucester   and 
Bristol . 

Hereford , 


Jn.  Bird  Sumner  . 
Chas.  Thos.  Longlev 
Arch.  C.  Tait   .     . 

Chas.  Thos.  Longlev 
Wm.  Thomson 


Arch.  C.  Tait 

John  Jackson 

Hon.  H.  Montagu  \'il!iers      .     , 
Charles  Baring 

Charles  R.  Sumner 

Saml.  Wilberforce 

Jas.  Colquhoun  Campbell  .     . 

Robt.  J.  Eden  (Lord  Auckland) 
Lord  Arthur  Hervey      .     .     . 

Hon.  S.  Waldegrave      ... 
Harvey  Goodwin 

John  Graham 

Wm.  Jacobson 

Ashurst  Turner  Gilbert      .     . 
R.  Durnford 

Thomas  Turton 

E.  Harold  Browne    .... 

Henry  Phillpotts 

Fred.  Temple 

Wm.  Thomson 

Chas.  Jn.  Ellicott 

Renn  W.  Hampden      .     .     . 
James  Atlay 


ppointed 

1848. 
1862. 

)) 

1868. 

t86o. 

J) 

1S62. 

5) 

1856. 
1868. 

1856. 
1861. 

>> 

1827. 
1869. 

55 

1859. 

1854. 
1869. 

i860. 

>) 

1869. 

1848. 
1855. 

3> 

)5 

1842. 
1870. 

)' 

1845. 
1864. 

5) 

1830. 
1869. 

1861. 

» 

1863. 

}J 

1848. 
1868. 

7o8 


APPENDIX. 


Bishops  of— 
Lichfield 


Lincoln    .     . 

■\ 

Llandaff  .     .     . 

Manchester .     . 

\ 

Norwich  .     . 

Oxford     .     . 

{ 

Peterborough 

■{ 

Ripon  .     .     . 

Rochester     . 

1 

St.  Asaph      . 

r 
•  "I 

St.  David's   . 

Salisbury 

( 

Worcester    . 

i 

■  \ 

Sodor  and  Man 


Jn.  Lonsdale appointed  1843. 

Geo.  A.  Selwyn „  1867. 

Jn.  Jackson „  1853. 

Ch.  Wordsworth „  1868. 

Alfred  Ollivant „  1849. 

Jas.  Prince  Lee „  1848. 

Jas.  Fraser „  1870. 

Hon.  J.  T.  Pelham „  1859. 

Sam.  Wilberforce „  1845. 

Jas.  F.  Mackarness „  1869. 

Geo.  Davys '  .  „  1839. 

Fras.  Jeune „  1864. 

W.  C.  Magee „  1868. 

Rob.  Bickersteth „  1856. 

Jn.  Cotton  Wigram „  i860. 

Thos.  Legh  Claughton  ....  „  1867. 

Thos.  \'owler  Short ,,  1846. 

Joshua  Hughes „  1870. 

Connop  Thirlvvall      .....  „  1840. 

Walter  Kerr  Hamilton  ....  „  1854. 

Geo.  Moberley „  1869. 

H.  Pepys „  1841. 

H.  Philpott „  1861. 

Hon.  Horatio  Powys     ....  „  1854. 


END    OF   VOL.    I. 


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